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THE   BEACON   BIOGRAPHIES 

EDITED    Bi" 

M.  A.  DeWOLFE   HOWE 


PHILLIPS    BROOKS 

BY 

M.  A.  DeWOLFE   HOWE 


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PHILLIPS     BROOKS 


M.  A.   DeWOLFE  HOWE 


BOSTON 

SMALL,   MAYNARD  &  COMPANY 
MDCCCXCIX 


Dedicatedj  by  permission^ 

to  the 

Bight  Reverend 

WILLIAM   NEILSOX  McYICKAR,   D.D., 

Bishoj)- Coadjutor  of  Bhode  Island. 


PEEFACE. 

Li  preparing  this  volume  the  ivriter  has 
been  struclc  by  the  fact  that  as  yet  there 
is  ve7y  little  written  about  Phillips  Brooks 
excepting  by  7nenibers  of  his  profession, 
Fossibly,  this  gives  a  layman  the  better 
reason  for  ventin^ing  to  touch  the  subject  in 
his  oton  ivay.  He  has  not  touched  it,  in 
this  instance,  icith  any  hope  or  wish  of 
doing  what  a  clergyman  might  do  with  it. 
If  there  is  too  little  of  theology,  he  trusts 
there  is  not  correspondingly  too  much  of  the 
personal  Phillips  Brooks,  Indeed,  he  does 
not  believe  this  to  be  possible,  and  would  be 
better  content  if  he  could  feel  that  the  man  of 
ivhom  he  has  written  had  been  more  clearly 
and  completely  pictured  in  the  narrative. 

Although  the  author  has  not  written 
clerically,  he  wishes  to  express  his  prese7it 
obligations  to  those  tvho  could  not  well  tvrite 
otherxoise.  Many  sermons  and  essays  from 
clerical  petis  have  provided  information, 
which  has  been  gratefully  used.     In  particu- 


X  PKEFACE 

Jar  the  privately  printed  ^^  Reminiscences''^ 
of  tlie  Rev.  C.  A.  L.  Richards  and  tlw  Rev. 
G.  A.  Strouff,  from  which  many  citation.s 
are  made,  have  thrown  a  clear  personal  light 
up(/n  their  subject.  For  the  direct  aid  of  a 
friend's  good  advice  the  Rev.  W.  D.  Rob- 
erts, assistant  at  Trinity  Church,  Boston, 
during  the  last  four  years  of  the  rectorship 
of  Phillips  BrooJcs,  must  be  wannly  thanked. 
Finally,  and  chiefly,  the  author  would 
record  his  special  indebtedness  to  the  Rev. 
Prof.  A.  V.  G.  Alien,  of  Cambridge,  tvho 
of  his  time  now  largely  devoted  to  com- 
pleting the  authoritative  ^^  Life  and  Letters 
of  Phillips  Brooks  ^^  has  given  generously 
to  read  the  proof  of  this  volume,  and  thus  to 
free  it  from  errors  which  could  not  other- 
wise have  been  avoided. 

Boston,  March,  1899. 


CHEONOLOGY. 

1835 
December  15.  Phillips  Brooks  was  born 
at  56  High  St.,  Boston. 

1839  ' 

His  family  left  the  First  Church,  Chauncy 
Place,  and  became  members  of  St.  Paul's 
Church,  Dr.  J.  S.  Stone,  rector. 

1842-46 
Attended  Adams  School,  Boston. 

1846-51 
Attended  Boston  Latin  School. 

1851 
Entered  Harvard  College. 

1855 
Graduated  at  Harvard  College. 

1855-56 
Taught  at  Boston  Latin  School. 

1856 
Entered  Alexandria   (Ya.)  Theological 
Seminary. 

1859 
Graduated  at  Alexandria. 


xii  CHRONOLOGY 

1859  {continued) 
July  1.     Ordained  deacon. 
Became   rector   of  the    Church    of    the 
Advent,  Philadelphia. 

1860 
May  27.   Ordained  priest. 

1862 
Became  rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy- 
Trinity,  Philadelphia. 
Death  of  his  brother  George. 

1863 
Noveniber  26.  Delivered  The  Mercies  of 
Jleoccupatlon :    A     Tliaiiksglving    Sermon. 
Holy  Trinity  Church,  Philadelphia. 

1865 
April  23.     Delivered  The  Life  and  Death 
of  Abraham   Lincoln:    Sermon   at   Holy 
Trinity  Church,  Philadelphia. 
July  21.  Made    the  prayer  at  Harvard 
Commemoration  Service. 
August.    Set  out  on  first  journey  abroad. 

1866 
September.  Returned  from  journey,  hav- 
ing   visited    Great    Britain,    Germany, 


CHEONOLOGY  xiil 

Austria,      Turkey,      Palestine,     Egypt, 
Italy,  Greece,  France,  and  Switzerland. 

1869 
November  7.  Became    rector    of    Trinity 
Church,  Boston. 

1870 
June-September.  Visited    the   Tyrol   and 
Switzerland. 

Elected  overseer  of  Harvard  College. 
October  6.   Made   the    prayer    at  laying 
of  corner-stone  of  Memorial  Hall,  Cam- 
bridge. 

1872 
June-SepteTiiber.  Visited    Norway,    Swe- 
den,  Finland,   Eussia,   and  Germany. 
November  10.  Old  Trinity  Church,  Bos- 
ton, destroyed  by  fire. 

1873 
Present  Trinity  Church,  Boston,  begun. 

1874 
Spent  the  summer  in  Europe. 
Death  of  his  brother  Frederick. 

1876 
Ee-elected  overseer  of  Harvard  College. 


xiv  CHRONOLOGY 

1877 
February  11.  Historical     sermon,     dedi- 
cation of  Trinity  Church,   Boston. 
Delivered    and    published    Lectures    on 
Preaching, 

Eeceived    Degree   of    S.T.D.,    Harvard 
College. 
Summer  in  Europe. 

1878 
Published  SemioTis. 

1879 
Delivered  and  Published   The  Influence 
of  J&ius  (Bohlen  Lectures). 
Death  of  his  father. 

1880 
Spent  the  summer  in  Great  Britain  and 
France. 
Death  of  his  mother. 

1882 
Invited  to  Plummer  Professorship,  Har- 
vard College. 

Published   The  Candle  of  the   Lardy  and 
Other  Sermons. 
June.  Set  out  on   journey  to   England, 


CHEONOLOGY  xv 

France,  Italy,  Germany,  Austria,  India, 
and  Spain. 

1883 
Elected  to  third  term  as  overseer  of  Har- 
vard College. 

September,  Eeturned  from  foreign  travel. 
Published  Sermons  preached  in  English 
Churches. 

1885 
April  23.  Delivered  Address  at  celebra- 
tion of  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniver- 
sary of  the  foundation  of  the  Public  Latin 
School,  Boston. 

May-September.  Travelled  in  England, 
Germany,  Italy,  and  France. 

1886 
Elected    assistant    bishop    of    Pennsyl- 
vania.    Declined. 

May- June.  Made  a  journey  to  California, 
Yosemite,  and  Vancouver's  Island. 
Became  one  of  the  Board  of  University 
Preachers,  Harvard  College,  holding  the 
post  till  1891. 
November.  Delivered  the  sermon  at  the 


xvi  CHRONOLOGY 

two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of 
the  foundation  of  Harvard  College. 
December  15.  Delivered  Address  at  two 
hundredth  commemoration  of  the  foun- 
dation of  King's  Chapel,  Boston. 

1887 
Published      Twenty     Sennons      (Fourth 
Series). 

Delivered  and  published  Tolerance  (two 
lectures  addressed  to  the  students  of  sev- 
eral of  the  Divinity  Schools  of  the  Prot- 
estant Episcopal  CI  lurch). 
Spent  the  summer  in  England,  and  at- 
tended the  Queen's  Jubilee. 

1889 
June-Septeinher.  Made      a     journey     to 
Japan. 

1890 
Delivered  Noonday  Lenten  lectures  to 
business   men   in  Trinity  Churcli,   New 
York. 

Spent  the  summer  in   Switzerland   and 
England. 


CHRONOLOGY  xvii 

1890  (^continued) 
Published   The  Light  of  the  World^   and 
Other  Sermo7is. 

1891 
April  30.  Elected   bishop   of  Massachu- 
setts. 

October  14.  Consecrated  bishoj)  of  Massa- 
chusetts. 

1892 
Delivered  Noonday  Lenten  lectures  to 
business     men    in    St.    Paul's    Church, 
Boston. 

June-September.  Made  a  journey  to  Eng- 
land, France,  Tyrol,  and  Switzerland. 
December  21.  Delivered  address  at  annual 
celebration  of  the  New  England  Society, 
Brooklyn,  N.Y. 

1893 
January  23.  Phillips  Brooks  died. 
Sermons  (Sixth  Series),  published. 

1894 
Letters  of  Travel,  published. 

1895 
Sermons  for  the   Principal   Festivals   and 


xviii  CHRONOLOGY 

Fasts    of    the     Church    Year     (Seventh 

Series),  published. 

Death  of  his  brother  Arthur. 

1896 
Neto  Starts  in  Life,    and   Other  Sermons 
(Eighth  Series),  published. 

1899 
Phillips  Brooks  House,  Harvard  College, 
completed. 


PHILLIPS  BROOKS 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

I. 

The  man  whose  life  is  the  theme  of 
this  small  volume  had  opinions  of  his 
own  about  the  reading  and  the  writing 
of  biographies.  An  address  to  the  boys 
of  Phillips  Academy,  Exeter,  delivered 
in  1886,  showed  beyond  question  that 
the  whole  subject  of  biography  was  fa- 
miliar and  dear  to  him.  On  this  occa- 
sion he  used  a  few  words  which  cannot 
be  ignored  by  any  one  who  would  at- 
tempt to  describe  his  life.  '^I  think," 
he  said,  ^ '  that  the  reading  of  many  biog- 
raphies ought  to  be  begun  in  the  middle. 
It  seems  a  disorderly  suggestion,  but  it 
has  reason  in  it.  It  is  the  way  in  which 
you  come  to  know  a  man.  You  touch 
his  life  at  some  point  in  its  course  :  you 
find  it  full  of  attractive  activity ;  you 
grow  interested  in  what  he  is  doing.  So 
you  grow  interested  in  him  ;  and  then, 
not  till  then,  you  care  to  know  how  he 


2  PHILLIPS  BEOOKS 

came  to  be  what  you  find  liim, — what  his 
training  was,  what  his  youth  was,  who 
his  parents  were,  perhaps  who  his  an- 
cestors were,  and  who  was  the  first  man 
of  his  name  who  came  over  to  America, 
and  where  that  progenitor's  other  de- 
scendants have  settled.  The  same  is 
true,  I  think,  of  a  biography.  Indeed, 
I  have  often  wondered  whether  a  biog- 
raphy might  not  be  written  in  that  way. 
.  .  .  Probably  biographers  will  not  so 
write  for  us  ;  but  we  may  sometimes 
read  thus  the  biographies  which  they 
have  written  in  the  dull  order  of  chro- 
nology, and  find  them  full  of  livelier 
and  deeper  interest." 

If  within  the  limits  of  the  present 
writing  it  is  not  possible  to  act  upon 
the  whole  suggestion  of  this  passage,  at 
least  we  need  not  utterly  disregard  it. 
Let  us,  then,  look  at  two  events  of  the 
year  1865. 

When  the  news  of  the  fall  of  Rich- 
mond reached  Philadelphia,  a  meeting 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  3 

for  public  rejoicing  was  immediately 
held  in  front  of  the  building  from 
which,  eighty- nine  years  before,  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  had  been 
given  forth.  To  offer  up  thanksgiving 
for  the  ending  of  the  Civil  War,  a  man 
not  yet  thirty  years  of  age,  slender,  ex- 
traordinarily tall,  and  of  a  countenance 
the  more  beautiful  for  its  great  earnest- 
ness, stood  up,  with  his  eyes  toward  the 
sky,  and  thanked  God  from  the  very 
heart  of  the  whole  assemblage  gathered 
outside  of  Independence  Hall.  One 
person  was  there,  however,  who  had  no 
rightful  place  in  the  crowd ;  for  he 
turned  to  the  man  beside  him,  and 
said, — 

^^Look  at  that  old  fogy  yonder,  pray- 
ing with  his  eyes  turned  up,  as  if  God 
was  any  more  up  than  down." 

^^  Who  are  you  calling  an  old  fogy  I " 
replied  his  neighbor,  who  happened  to 
know  the  young  preacher  so  grossly  mis- 
defined.     ^  ^  Take  that. ' '     So  saying,  and 


4  PHILLIPS   BEOOKS 

acting  with  less  of  Christian  forbearance 
than  of  singular  appropriateness  to  the 
prayer  just  then  making  for  the  over- 
throw of  our  enemies,  he  dealt  the  fel- 
low a  stinging  blow.  It  wiis  an  answer 
which,  in  spite  of  its  vigor,  lacked  the 
important  virtue  of  telling  who  the  ^^old 
fogy"  was. 

This  was  in  April  of  1865.  In  July 
of  the  same  year  the  sons  of  Harvard 
met  at  Cambridge  for  the  commemora- 
tion of  their  brothers  who  fell  in  the 
war.  Lowell's  Ode  for  the  occasion 
seems  permanently  to  have  fixed  the 
memory  of  it,  not  as  a  local  and  special 
celebration,  but  as  something  national 
and  universal.  Yet  the  testimony  of 
those  who  took  part  in  all  the  proceed- 
ings is  not  that  the  Ode  or  the  music 
or  the  Oration  or  the  Poem  —  each  the 
utterance  of  an  acknowledged  master  — 
was  the  memorable  interpretation  of  the 
spirit  of  the  day.  This,  according  to 
the  unanimous  verdict  of  President  Eliot, 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  5 

Colonel  Higgiuson,  and  many  others, 
was  found  rather  in  the  prayer  made 
at  the  morning  exercises  in  the  First 
Church  by  the  young  clergyman  already 
seen  in  Philadelphia,  and  still  under 
thirty ;  for  it  was  he  who  brought  to- 
gether and  gave  forth  the  whole  sense  of 
loss,  pain,  loyalty,  sacrifice,  joy,  and  sor- 
row, which  others  later  in  the  day  were, 
according  to  their  several  ability,  to 
utter.  If  the  fame  of  this  young  man's 
loyal  eloquence  in  Philadelphia  had  not 
reached  the  ears  of  authorities  alert 
to  hear  good  things  about  the  children 
of  the  college,  he  could  never  have 
been  asked  to  offer  the  Commemoration 
Prayer.  Personally,  he  was  little  known 
in  the  world  of  Harvard  outside  the  col- 
lege generation  into  which  he  was  born. 
But  now  the  assembled  dignitaries  of 
college,  State,  and  army,  learned  that  a 
new  and  glowing  light  had  flamed  out 
on  their  horizon.  Spell-bound  they  lis- 
tened to  the  words,  and  were  taken  up 


6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

by  the  spirit  of  the  j)reacher  who  in  the 
next  decade  was  to  write,  ^^  It  was  hard 
during  the  Eebellion  to  illustrate  the 
Christian  warfare  by  the  then  familiar 
story  of  the  soldier^  s  life  without  hear- 
ing through  the  sermon  the  drums  of 
the  Potomac,  and  seeing  the  spires  of 
Richmond  quite  as  much  as  the  walls 
of  the  New  Jerusalem  in  the  distance." 
The  drums  and  the  Southern  spires  and 
the  heavenly  vision  seem  all  to  have 
blended  in  the  marvellous  prayer.  When 
it  was  done,  the  eager  whispered  ques- 
tion which  sprang  to  almost  every  lip 
was,  ^^Whoisthisr' 


n. 

The  reader  hardly  needs  to  be  told 
that  it  was  Phillips  Brooks.  So  closely 
identified  were  his  later  and  earlier 
years  with  Boston  and  Harvard  College 
that  it  is  hard  to  realize  the  existence 
of  a  period  when  Phillips  Brooks  was 
something  of  a  stranger  in  the  place  of 
his  birth  and  longest  residence.  None 
had  a  better  inherited  right  to  be  known 
in  Massachusetts  than  he  who  took 
pleasure  in  calling  John  Cotton  his 
"very  great  grandfather."  This  rela- 
tionship was  on  his  father's  side.  On  his 
mother's,  he  could  claim  a  common 
descent  with  the  founder  of  Phillips 
Academy,  Andover,  and  with  "Wendell 
Phillips.  His  mother,  Mary  Ann  Phil- 
lips, has  been  defined  as  gifted  with  a 
genius  for  religion.  The  simple  fact 
that  four  of  her  six  sons  entered  the 
ministry  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  speaks  volubly  for  her  influence. 


8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

William  Gray  Brooks,  the  father  of  this 
family,  was  a  substantial  Boston  mer- 
chant, of  strong  i^hysique,  integrity,  and 
will.  PhilliiDS  Brooks,  the  second  of 
his  sons,  was  born  in  Boston,  December 
13,  1835.  The  boy  was  baptized  by 
the  Unitarian  minister  of  the  First 
Church  in  Ohauncy  Place,  which  the 
family  attended.  It  is  curious  that  they 
should  soon  have  done  precisely  what 
Phillips  Brooks,  in  his  own  ministry, 
led  many  Unitarians  to  do, —  transfer 
their  allegiance  to  the  church  of  Epis- 
copacy. In  1839  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Brooks 
became  members  of  St.  Paul's  Church, 
of  which  the  Eev.  Dr.  Alexander  H. 
Vinton  was  soon  to  become  the  rector. 
The  personal  influence  of  a  clergyman 
like  Dr.  Vinton  in  the  household  of  a 
parishioner  like  his  vestryman,  Mr. 
Brooks,  may  be  powerful  for  good  j  and 
so  it  was  in  this  case.  To  the  wise 
influence  of  Dr.  Vinton,  at  several  criti- 
cal points  in  the   lifetime  of   Phillips 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  9 

Brooks,  the  younger  man  owed  a  debt 
of  gratitude,  which  he  was  always  ready 
to  acknowledge. 

The  effective  influences  of  Phillips 
Brooks's  boyhood  were  by  no  means 
only  those  of  religion.  In  the  middle 
years  of  the  century  the  life  of  a  Boston 
boy,  born  into  the  best  circumstances  of 
the  place,  had  the  power  to  plant  in  the 
right  soil  many  seeds  of  fruitful  man- 
hood. The  domestic  life  of  the  period 
was  marked  with  a  simple  dignity. 
There  was  no  dearth  of  older  men  to 
whom  the  younger  could  look  up,  and 
learn  the  true  meaning  and  value  of  dis- 
tinction. These,  in  a  manner,  were  the 
advantages  of  an  aristocracy.  To  hold 
them  at  their  just  weight,  there  were 
the  compensating  democratic  advan- 
tages of  training  in  the  public  schools. 
Here  the  boy  learned  to  think  of  his 
city  as  the  impartial  mother  of  all,  and 
rubbed  his  wits  and  shoulders  against 
those  of  other  boys  of  all  degrees.     The 


10  PHILLIPS   BEOOKS 

trouble  was  with  the  boy  himself,  if  the 
combining  influences  did  not  bring  him 
early  to  some  realization  of  'things  as 
they  are."  The  joint  effect  of  these  in- 
fluences was  clearly  to  be  seen  in  Phil- 
lips Brooks.  With  his  spirit  of  democ- 
racy were  mingled  some  of  the  best 
qualities  of  the  patrician ;  and  these  in 
turn  could  never  so  take  i^ossession  of 
him  as  to  make  him  forget  that  he  and 
the  man  of  humblest  intellect  and  sta- 
tion were  essentially  brothers. 

Of  the  outward  circumstances  of  the 
boy's  schooling  it  is  not  worth  while  to 
recall  many  details.  He  was  sent  first 
to  the  Adams  School,  and  then  to  the 
Boston  Latin  School.  The  value  he 
placed  upon  the  training  of  this  insti- 
tution is  fully  set  forth  in  the  historical 
address  he  delivered  at  the  two  hundred 
and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  its  founding. 
To  find  himself  in  the  same  scholastic 
succession  with  Franklin,  the  Adamses, 
John  Hancock,  Emerson,  Motley,  Sum- 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  11 

ner,  and  Phillips, — this  alone  must  have 
been  a  strong  inward  stimulus  to  a  boy 
keenly  responsive  to  suggestion.  Out- 
wardly, he  made  himself  remembered  as 
one  who  wrought  a  just  blending  of 
study  and  play,  taking  part  and  pleas- 
ure in  baseball  games  on  the  Common, 
but  not  in  the  sports  or  pranks  which 
called  forth  the  more  boisterous  ele- 
ments of  young  human  nature. 

With  the  class  of  1855  he  entered 
Harvard  College ;  and  here  his  record 
followed  naturally  upon  that  of  his 
school -days.  Felton,  Agassiz,  and  Long- 
fellow were  members  of  the  strong 
teaching  force,  at  the  head  of  which 
stood  President  Walker,  one  of  the  men 
to  whom  Phillips  Brooks  felt  himself 
most  indebted.  In  general,  the  young 
man's  scholarship  was  of  fair  but  not 
exceptional  rank.  The  single  point  in 
which  he  seems  to  have  shown  real  dis- 
tinction was  that  of  writing :  in  this  he 
proved  and  maintained  an  easy  mastery. 


12  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

In  these  days,  also,  he  formed  his  habits 
and  tastes  of  reading  widely  in  the 
books  best  worth  reading.  As  Brown- 
ing—  whose  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  he  never 
wearied  of  quoting  —  was,  a  few  years 
later,  the  poet  of  his  special  admira- 
tion, in  college  it  is  said  to  have  been 
Tennyson.  In  Memoriam  —  perhaps  al- 
ways the  poem  of  all  poems  for  which 
he  cared  most — had  been  published 
only  a  year  before  Phillips  Brooks  be- 
came a  collegian  ;  and  the  enthusiasm 
of  such  a  youth  for  such  a  poem,  still 
fresh  to  the  world,  is  easy  to  imagine. 
But,  apart  from  the  more  and  less  ^^  hu- 
mane letters"  of  the  college  course, 
there  were  other  things  which  enlisted 
the  healthy  interest  of  the  young  man. 
As  a  single  illustration  of  the  fact  that 
so  early  as  this  no  human  thing  was 
utterly  foreign  to  Phillips  Brooks,  one 
is  not  sorry  to  find  his  name  on  the 
programme  of  the  Hasty  Pudding  Club 
theatricals  of  his  class.     In  the  catalogue 


PHILLIPS  BEOOKS  13 

of  alumni  lie  might  have  seen  that 
twenty-six  men  named  Phillips  and 
twenty-two  named  Brooks  had  received 
degrees  from  the  college  before  his  class 
of  1855.  When  his  own  graduation 
came,  he  had  every  reason  to  bear  away 
from  the  four  years  of  his  Cambridge  life 
and  from  all  the  years  preceding  them  a 
deep-rooted  loyalty  to  the  Alma  Mater 
which  had  given  him  of  her  fulness,  and 
must  be  repaid  out  of  his. 

The  year  which  followed  the  gradua- 
tion of  Phillips  Brooks  stands  alone  in 
the  record  of  his  life  as  a  year  of  unmis- 
takable failure.  He  became  an  usher 
in  the  Boston  Latin  School,  still  under 
the  mastership  of  Francis  Gardner,  his 
own  teacher.  When  he  made  the  his- 
torical address  to  the  alumni  of  the 
school  in  1885,  it  must  have  been  with 
a  certain  satisfaction  that  he  repeated 
Mr.  Gardner's  opinion  of  the  man  who 
failed  as  a  school-teacher, — that  he 
could  never  succeed    in  any   capacity. 


14  PHILLIPS  BROOKS 

So  much  wiser  than  Mr.  Gardner  — 
through  no  virtue  of  our  own  —  are  we 
of  later  years  that  we  do  not  even  like 
to  think  what  might  have  happened 
if  Phillips  Brooks  had  succeeded  as  a 
school-teacher.  It  is  good  to  know  that 
his  failure  lay  simply  in  his  inability  to 
discipline  the  more  difficult  boys :  with 
the  better  pupils  he  was  eminently  a 
success.  When  his  failure  was  apparent, 
and  the  authorities  had  found  a  man  to 
take  his  place,  he  resigned  in  February 
and  spent  the  remainder  of  the  school 
year,  without  occupation,  at  his  father's 
house. 

Probably  this  was  the  very  discipline 
which  Phillips  Brooks  most  needed  at 
the  time.  It  forced  him  to  search  his 
heart,  and  decide  what  was  indeed  the 
work  for  him  to  do  in  the  world. 
Toward  making  this  decision  he  sought 
the  advice  of  Dr.  Vinton  and  President 
Walker ;  and  both  of  them,  in  common 
with    every   domestic    influence  and   a 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  15 

powerful  inward  impulse,  urged  him  to 
enter  the  ministry.  It  was  in  compli- 
ance with  the  sage  counsel  of  Dr.  Vinton 
that  he  went  for  his  theological  education 
to  the  Seminary  at  Alexandria,  Vir- 
ginia, Harvard  College  had  contributed 
its  share  of  critical  and  scholarly  ele- 
ments to  the  training  of  this  son  of  hers  : 
it  was  something  far  different  which  the 
Alexandria  Seminary  had  to  give  him. 
The  distinguishing  mark  of  this  school 
was  its  evangelical  fervor.  A  large  per- 
centage of  its  graduates  became  mission- 
aries, and  so  ^'  Low  Church  '^  were  all  its 
tendencies  that  a  witty  alumnus  has 
seen  fit  to  point  out  the  astonishing  fact 
that  very  few  of  his  Alexandria  brethren 
have  become  extreme  ritualists.  Most  in- 
fluential in  the  seminary  was  the  Eev.  Dr. 
William  Sparrow,  a  man  of  great  learn- 
ing and  piety,  whose  influence  led  Phil- 
lips Brooks  many  years  later  to  describe 
him  as  ^'one  of  the  three  or  four  men 
whom  I  have  known  whom  I  look  upon 


16  PHILLIPS   BUOOKS 

with  perpetual  gratitude  for  the  help 
and  direction  they  have  given  to  my 
life,  and  whose  power  I  feel  in  forms  of 
action  and  kinds  of  thought  very  dif- 
ferent from  those  in  which  I  had  specifi- 
cally to  do  with  them.'^  The  man  of 
whom  these  words  could  be  written  must 
have  possessed  some  merely  intellectual 
power  above  and  beyond  the  average  of 
intellect  displayed  at  Alexandria.  On 
his  first  night  at  the  school  the  young 
Bostonian  stood  amazed  at  the  religious 
zeal  of  the  young  men  who  poured  out 
their  souls  at  a  prayer- meeting.  On 
the  next  day,  in  the  recitation- room,  he 
was  no  less  amazed  to  find  these  same 
young  men  entirely  unprepared  in  their 
studies.  ^' The  boiler,'^  as  he  afterward 
described  the  phenomenon,  ^Miad  no 
connection  with  the  engine. '^  In  Cam- 
bridge he  had  doubtless  been  more  fa- 
miliar with  the  spectacle  of  engines 
detached  from  boilers.  From  these  new 
surroundings    there    were    obvious    ad- 


PHILLIPS  BEOOKS  17 

vantages  to  be  gained  by  a  student  for 
the  ministry.  Yet  this  one  apparently 
never  reconciled  himself  entirely  to  the 
change  of  atmosphere  j  for,  in  his  last 
year  at  the  seminary,  he  wrote  to  an 
intimate  friend,  whose  course  was  com- 
pleted;  '^When  are  you  coming  to  see 
us  ?  Leave  your  intellect  behind :  you 
won' t  need  it  here. ' '  Against  the  bodily 
discomforts  of  the  place,  the  young  stu- 
dent had  corresponding  grounds  for  com- 
plaint. The  present  Bishop  of  New 
York,  we  are  told,  took  pity  on  the  tall 
new-comer  assigned  to  a  room  in  which  he 
could  not  stand  up  and  a  bed  from  which 
his  feet  protruded  far,  and  gave  him  the 
freedom  of  his  own  quarters.  Others  also 
have  borne  witness  to  the  immediate  rec- 
ognition of  his  power  as  a  writer.  Until 
a  special  task  called  for  the  exercise  of 
this  gift,  it  was  not  remarked  that  his 
talents  were  extraordinary  ;  but  here,  as 
at  Cambridge,  he  showed  at  once  that  in 
the   writing   of   his   mother    tongue   he 


18  PHILLIPS  BROOK 

stood  supreme  among  his  fellows.  Here, 
too,  in  some  sonnets  read  before  the 
seminary  Rhetorical  Society,  he  revealed 
the  presence  of  that  poetic  endowment 
upon  which  many  would  have  been  glad 
to  see  him  call  more  frequently  than  for 
the  carols  with  which  he  supplied  his 
Sunday-schools  from  time  to  time.  At 
least  one  of  these —  ^^O  Little  Town  of 
Bethlehem,"  written  for  the  Sunday- 
school  of  Holy  Trinity  Church,  Phila- 
delphia,—  has  taken  a  definite  place  in 
the  religious  poetry  of  the  language. 
Every  preacher,  he  believed,  must  be 
something  of  a  poet;  and  scattered 
everywhere  through  the  sermons  of  Phil- 
lips Brooks  are  the  fragments  which 
show  us  how  he  lived  up  to  this  article 
of  his  belief. 

It  was  in  the  neighborhood  of  Alexan- 
dria that  the  great  preacher  made  his 
humble  beginnings  at  preaching.  Three 
miles  from  the  seminary  was  a  chapel, 
attended   for  the   most  part  by  ^^poor 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  19 

whites,'^  to  whom  the  students  rendered 
a  half- fledged  ministry.  Mr.  Brooks 
himself  used  to  tell  of  the  response  he 
elicited  from  a  countryman  of  the  region 
by  an  invitation  to  attend  the  chapel 
services:  ^^ Stranger,  we  don't  like  you 
fellows  comin^  down  and  prac^mn'  on 
us.''  If,  however,  one  were  to  believe 
and  recount  all  the  anecdotes  of  Phillips 
Brooks,  the  writing  of  books  far  larger 
than  this  one  would  be  called  for.  The 
obscure  Virginia  chapel  would  be  at 
once  an  important  scene  of  story.  On 
the  one  hand,  it  is  said,  and  probably 
with  truth,  that  the  first  efforts  of  the 
untried  speaker  filled  him  with  discour- 
agement. On  the  other,  probably  with 
more  of  romance  than  of  accuracy,  w^e 
hear  of  the  ignominious  defeat  which  he 
visited  upon  an  ^^ opposition  party"  in 
the  chapel,  headed  by  a  Northern  unbe- 
liever, who  finally  was  brought  with  aU. 
but  one  of  his  followers  to  baptism  and 
confirmation.      The  report  of  this  tri- 


20  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

iimph,  we  also  hear,  brought  from  Phil- 
adelphia the  representatives  of  the  first 
parish  of  Avhich  Phillips  Brooks  had 
charge.  They  listened  to  his  preaching, 
the  story  goes,  and  begged  him  on  the 
spot  to  become  their  minister.  This  is 
not  an  incident  to  which  the  reader 
is  asked  to  give  entire  credence ;  but, 
like  many  another  anecdote  of  Phillips 
Brooks,  it  is  true  in  spirit,  if  not  in  let- 
ter, and  might  even  be  classed  with  the 
stories  which  ought  to  be  true  if  they 
are  not.  The  present  writer,  however, 
does  not  set  himself  to  deal  with  doubt- 
ful statements,  but  prefers  to  bring  to  an 
end  this  hasty  review  of  the  seminary 
days  with  the  prophetic  words  of  one  of 
the  Alexandria  professors  :  ^'  That  young 
man  is  fitted  for  any  position  that  the 
Church  has  to  give  him.'' 


III. 

In  1859  Phillips  Brooks  finished  his 
seminary  course,  was  ordained  deacon  on 
July  1  by  Bishop  Meade  of  Virginia,  and 
immediately  took  charge  of  the  Church 
of  the  Advent  in  Philadelphia.  He 
would  not  pledge  himself  at  first  to 
more  than  three  months  of  service, 
so  honestly  doubtful  was  he  of  his 
ability  to  satisfy  the  parishioners.  How 
seriously  he  took  the  work  to  which  he 
felt  called,  we  may  infer  from  his  words 
spoken  nearly  twenty  years  later:  ^^I 
can  remember  how,  as  I  looked  forward 
to  preaching,  every  book  I  read  and 
every  man  I  talked  with  seemed  to  teem 
with  sermons.  They  all  suggested  some- 
thing which  it  seemed  as  if  the  preacher 
of  the  gospel  ought  to  say  to  men." 
What  he  felt  this  something  to  be,  we 
may  know  from  these  other  words  of  his 
concerning  the  true  interpreter  of  God  to 
men :  ^ '  He  looks  into  their  faces  as  if  he 


22  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

saw  behind  each  of  them  another  face, 
which  shone  through  theirs,  and  gave  to 
their  sordidness  its  dignity  and  value." 
With  such  conceptions  of  the  work  he 
had  to  do,  together  with  his  inborn  quali- 
fications for  doing  it,  there  was  of  course 
but  one  possible  ending  for  his  first  three 
months  at  the  little  church  in  the  un- 
fashionable portion  of  the  city  where  the 
Advent  stood.  The  young  rector  pledged 
himself  to  the  parish  for  a  year,  and, 
when  this  was  done,  remained  for  about 
one  year  more  in  the  same  place.  He 
was  ordained  to  the  priesthood  on  May 
27,  1860. 

During  his  rectorship  of  the  Advent, 
he  was  wont  to  say,  he  received  from  a 
German,  for  the  only  time  in  his  minis- 
try, a  refusal  of  admission  to  a  house  he 
wished  to  visit  as  a  clergyman.  But 
here,  on  the  other  hand,  may  be  placed 
the  familiar  anecdote  of  his  finding  a 
poor  mother  taking  care  of  a  sick  child, 
for  whom  he  insisted  upon  caring  himself 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  23 

while  the  woman  went  for  a  walk  in  the 
fresh  air.  It  is  also  of  this  time  that 
a  clerical  contemporary  and  lifelong 
friend  tells  of  walking  home  from  church 
one  day  with  Mr.  Brooks  after  he  had 
preached  a  sermon  intended  to  bring 
consolation  into  lives  that  were  crushed 
with  sad  experiences  all  unknown  to 
him.  The  friend  expressed  a  wonder  at 
his  ability  to  speak  as  he  had  spoken 
of  things  of  which  he  must  be  igno- 
rant 5  ^ '  and  his  answer, ' '  says  the  friend, 
^^  comes  back  to  me  often  with  the  little 
preluding  laugh  that  never  hid  his  ear- 
nestness from  those  who  knew  him, — 
^  Oh,  well,  don' t  you  think  a  fellow  can 
put  himself  in  other  people's  place,  and 
see  how  they  must  feel?'  "  This  was  a 
power  which  he  never  ceased  to  exhibit. 
^^ Knowing  the  burdened  man's  burden 
just  because  of  the  unpressed  lightness 
of  his  own  shoulders,  feeling  the  sick 
man's  pain  all  the  more  because  his  own 
flesh  never  knew  an  ache," — these  words 


24  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

from  his  sermon,  ^^The  Choice  Young 
Man/'  written  many  years  later,  ex- 
plain more  fully  than  his  off-hand  an- 
swer on  the  Philadelphia  street  the 
power  of  comprehending  sympathy 
which  he  always  possessed.  To  rich  and 
poor,  in  public  and  in  private,  he  gave 
freely  of  the  fruits  of  this  power,  and 
often,  we  may  be  sure,  without  knowing 
how  much  he  gave.  To  its  value  for  those 
who  needed  it  most  there  was  perhaps 
no  better  testimony  than  that  which  Dr. 
Holmes,  after  a  great  bereavement  late 
in  his  life,  paid  to  the  preacher  by  leav- 
ing his  own  church  and  coming  Sunday 
after  Sunday  to  hear  what  the  sermons 
of  Phillips  Brooks  might  say  to  him. 

It  was  a  fortunate  circumstance  for 
Phillips  Brooks  and  for  Philadelphia 
that,  at  the  time  of  his  coming  there, 
Dr.  Alexander  H.  Vinton,  the  friend 
who  already  more  than  once  had  exerted 
the  right  influence  at  the  right  moment, 
was  the  rector  of  Holy  Trinity  Church, 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  25 

one  of  the  most  prominent  parishes  of 
the  city.  From  the  very  first,  Dr.  Vin- 
ton believed  in  Phillips  Brooks.  Ac- 
cordingly, he  often  asked  the  young  man 
to  occupy  his  pulpit  on  Sunday  after- 
noons. The  two  results  of  this  preach- 
ing were  that  many  members  of  the  Holy 
Trinity  parish  went  frequently  to  the 
distant  Church  of  the  Advent  for  even- 
ing and  other  services,  and  that  when 
Dr.  Vinton  in  1861  was  called  to  St. 
Mark's  in  the  Bowery,  in  New  York, 
Mr.  Brooks  was  asked  and  asked  again 
to  take  his  place,  and  after  less  than 
three  years  in  the  ministry  found  him- 
self in  charge  of  the  important  church 
on  Eittenhouse  Square.  The  prompt 
obtaining  of  high  military  rank  by 
some  of  the  youths  who  entered  the 
Civil  War  was  hardly  more  remarkable 
than  this  rapid  elevation  of  the  young 
clergyman. 

The  Civil  War  was  well  begun  when 
Phillips  Brooks  took  up  his  new  duties. 


26  PHILLIPS  BROOKS 

They  and  it  and  he  were  soon  found  to 
occupy  the  closest  possible  relations  to 
one  another.  In  his  own  definition, 
Philadelphia  represented  the  ^^temper- 
ate zone  of  religious  life" ;  but  it  lay  far 
too  near  the  equator  of  warfare  to  be 
temperate  in  all  things  connected  with 
the  Rebellion.  The  number  of  persons 
more  or  less  openly  in  sympathy  with 
the  South  was  large,  especially  in  the 
walks  of  society  from  which  the  con- 
gregation of  Holy  Trinity  was  mainly 
drawn.  I  have  heard  it  said  of  another 
Episcopal  church  in  Philadelphia  that 
in  the  war-time  the  clergyman  could  not 
read  the  prayer  for  the  President  with- 
out causing  a  rustle  of  silken  skirts  worn 
by  ladies  who  insisted  at  this  point  upon 
rising  from  their  knees.  To  set  one's 
self  in  public  and  in  private  uncompromis- 
ingly on  the  side  of  the  North  was  a  far 
more  difficult  thing  iu  Philadelphia  than 
in  Boston.  But  such  a  New  Englander 
as    Phillips   Brooks    could    stand    only 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  27 

where  he  stood  upon  the  questions  of 
that  day,  and  no  New  Englander  could 
have  stood  there  more  firmly.  One 
who  was  closely  associated  with  him 
then,  and  in  earlier  and  later  days, 
has  written  thus  of  his  attitude :  ^  ^  He 
was  ever  ready  to  speak,  to  work,  to 
set  others  working.  He  encountered 
blizzards  of  prejudice  and  virulence. 
Vestrymen  protested,  judges  who  were 
parishioners  ceased  to  be  judicial,  rich 
pew-holders  clamored,  pot-house  poli- 
ticians raged,  fine  ladies  carped  and 
sneered,  pleaded  and  cajoled.  None  of 
these  things  moved  him.  He  went  his 
way,  spoke  his  word,  did  his  deed,  and 
bore  himself  like  a  simple  king.^' 

To  the  same  authority  we  owe  the 
record  of  an  outward  deed  in  which 
Phillips  Brooks  bore  a  characteristic 
part.  Lee's  army  before  Harrisburg 
was  supposed  to  be  threatening  Phila- 
delphia itself.  Yet  the  city  was  pre- 
paring absolutely  no  means  of  defence. 


28  PHILLIPS   BEOOKS 

A  few  clergymen,  among  them  Mr. 
Brooks,  decided  one  Monday  morning 
that  something  must  be  done  at  once, 
and  that  they  mnst  do  it.  It  was  the 
time  when  a  number  of  ministerial  soci- 
eties were  holding  their  weekly  meetings. 
To  all  of  these  were  sent  copies  of  a 
paper  in  which  the  clergy  of  the  city 
should  offer  their  physical  services  for 
its  defence.  The  response  was  immedi- 
ate. About  a  hundred  ministers,  with 
Mr.  Brooks  and  an  aged  Presbyterian 
at  their  head,  presented  themselves  at 
the  mayor's  office,  and  begged  to  be 
employed  in  throwing  up  earthworks. 
While  waiting  for  orders,  they  bought 
spades  and  other  necessities ;  but,  what 
was  more  important,  the  municipal  au- 
thorities and  the  laity  took  the  hint,  and 
set  about  the  work  they  were  ashamed 
to  leave  entirely  in  clerical  hands. 

When  the  good  news  from  Gettysburg 
reached  Philadelphia,  Phillips  Brooks 
interrupted  the  morning  service  to  an- 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  29 

nounce  it  to  his  people.  On  the  follow- 
ing Thanksgiving  Day  he  preached  on 
^^The  Mercies  of  Eeoccupation. ' '  It 
needed  the  vision  of  an  optimist  to  see 
much  of  good  in  those  troubled  years, 
and  precisely  what  the  title  of  the  ser- 
mon meant  many  must  have  been  puzzled 
at  first  to  know.  But  he  did  not  leave 
them  long  in  doubt  that  ^^the  re-entrance 
into  the  principles  and  fundamental 
truths  of  the  nationality  which  they 
inherited ' '  seemed  to  him  to  outbalance 
many  losses,  and  that  "the  reoccupa- 
tion  of  the  disused  duties  and  privileges 
of  justice  and  liberty  and  human  brother- 
hood" was  indeed  a  mercy.  No  less 
than  for  all  these  things  was  he  thankful 
for  Abraham  Lincoln,  ^^so  honest,  so 
true,  so  teachable  at  the  lips  of  the 
Almighty. ' ' 

Between  Lincoln  and  Phillips  Brooks 
many  men  have  taken  pleasure  in  trac- 
ing spiritual  resemblances.  In  the 
largeness  of  their  sincerity,  in  the  sim- 


30  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

plicity  and  directness  of  their  natures, 
there  were  indeed  certain  elements  of 
likeness.  The  words  which  the  preacher 
applied  to  the  President  might  without 
too  great  a  strain  have  been  said  of  the 
preacher  himself:  ^^ There  are  men  as 
good  as  he,  but  they  do  bad  things. 
There  are  men  as  intelligent  as  he,  biit 
they  do  foolish  things.  In  him  goodness 
and  intelligence  combined  and  made  their 
best  result  of  wisdom. ' '  But  for  one  man 
to  recognize  the  power  and  to  feel  strongly 
drawn  to  the  personality  of  another  is 
not  necessarily  to  be  like  that  other,  and 
it  may  fairly  be  questioned  whether  the 
resemblance  between  these  two  men  will 
bear  any  close  analysis.  Certain  it  is 
that  Phillips  Brooks  lacked  nothing  of 
appreciation  for  everything  that  Lincoln 
was  and  did.  One  who  spent  the  morn- 
ing with  Mr.  Brooks  after  the  news  of 
the  President's  assassination  came  has 
written  to  me,  ^^His  grief  Wiis  intense  — 
in  fact,  too  great  to  express.''     Yet  he 


PHILLIPS  BEOOKS  31 

soon  expressed  it  in  a  noble  eulogy  de- 
livered in  Holy  Trinity  Church.  From 
this  it  is  worth  while  to  transcribe  the 
few  words  which  show  perhaps  most 
clearly  how  positive  were  the  convictions 
of  the  preacher  on  the  chief  issue  of  the 
Civil  War:  ^^By  all  the  goodness  that 
there  was  in  him,  by  all  the  love  we 
had  for  him, — and  who  shall  tell  how 
great  it  was? — by  all  the  sorrow  that  has 
burdened  down  this  desolate  and  dread- 
ful week,  I  charge  his  murder  where  it 
belongs, — on  Slavery.  I  bid  you  to  re- 
member where  the  charge  belongs,  to 
write  it  on  the  door-posts  of  your  mourn- 
ing-houses, to  teach  it  to  your  wondering 
children,  to  give  it  to  the  history  of 
these  times,  that  all  times  to  come  may 
hate  and  dread  the  sin  that  killed  our 
noblest  President. ' '  Are  these  the  words 
of  the  all-tolerant  Phillips  Brooks  ?  Yes, 
and  all  the  more  his  for  illustrating  clearlj^ 
his  belief  that  the  truest  tolerance  is  based 
upon  a  full  knowledge  of  the  evils  which 


32  PHILLIPS  BEOOKS 

it  is  called  upon  to  bear.  Entirely,  too, 
are  the  words  his  own  in  another  way  ;  for 
they  show  the  fulness  of  his  appreciation 
for  the  man  whom  it  is  not  too  fanciful 
to  place  —  quite  apart  from  resemblan- 
ces—  beside  and  with  the  few  to  whom 
Phillips  Brooks  owed  a  personal  debt  for 
the  formation  of  his  completed  manhood. 
When  the  war  was  over,  and  Mr. 
Brooks  had  taken  the  part  we  have  seen 
him  play  in  the  Harvard  Commemora- 
tion service, — apart  perhaps  the  more 
strenuous  because  of  the  loss  of  one  of 
his  brothers  in  the  great  struggle, — he 
stood  in  sore  need  of  rest,  and  proceeded 
at  once  to  take  it  in  the  first  of  his 
many  journeys  abroad.  For  nearly 
thirty  years  he  made  it  his  practice  to 
go  abroad  every  other  summer,  serving 
his  parish  each  alternate  year  through 
all  the  months  when  many  city  clergy- 
men are  following  their  congregations 
into  the  country  and  woods.  Two  of 
his  journeys  —  this  first  one  and  another 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  33 

in  1882-83  —  lasted  each  for  more  than 
a  year.  It  was  on  the  second  of  these 
long  journeys  that  he  went  as  far  as 
India ;  and  in  the  summer  of  1889  he 
and  his  friend,  Dr.  (now  Bishop)  Mc- 
Yickar,  made  their  way  to  Japan.  For 
most  clergymen  many  of  these  travels 
would  have  been  impossible;  but  Mr. 
Brooks  had  the  wisdom  to  put  his  free- 
dom from  all  domestic  cares,  and  the 
means  which  were  always  at  his  dis- 
posal, to  the  best  of  uses.  '' Home- 
keeping  youth  have  ever  homely  wits ' ' ; 
and,  as  the  years  went  on,  there  is  no 
doubt  whatever  that  the  effect  of  con- 
tact with  humanity  in  all  countries  and 
under  all  conditions  was  to  make 
broader  and  broader  the  sympathy  of 
Phillips  Brooks  with  all  mankind.  He 
was  making  a  good  beginning  when, 
out  of  his  first  experiences  in  foreign 
lands,  he  wrote  to  a  lifelong  friend, 
^^O,  Charles,  you  should  be  over  here, 
if  only  to  see  what  a  little  thing  the 


34  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

Protestant  Episcopal  Church  looks,  seen 
from  this  distance  ! '' 

In  this  first  journey  of  all,  it  is  highly 
interesting  to  observe  what  the  young 
traveller  took  with  him.  Study  and 
understanding  had  prepared  him  to  re- 
ceive impressions  which  would  have 
been  utterly  lost  upon  the  unfit.  Espe- 
ciallj^  in  Palestine  does  he  reveal  his 
preparedness  for  travel;  for  all  his  let- 
ters show  him  as  the  close  student  of  the 
Bible,  walking  for  the  first  time  among 
the  scenes  which  had  already  become  es- 
sentially real  to  him.  Because  he  took 
so  much,  of  course  he  was  capable  of 
bringing  back  the  more.  Living  memo- 
ries of  many  places  and  things  returned 
with  him,  delightful  recollections  of  de- 
lightful persons, —  Mrs.  Kemble,  Mrs. 
Gaskell,  Dean  Milman  in  England;  Mot- 
ley in  Vienna ;  Story  in  Rome,  engaged 
upon  the  statue  of  Edward  Everett,  now 
standing  in  the  Boston  Public  Garden, 
but  then   failing  to  impress  the  young 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  35 

traveller  with  its  dignity,  ^^for  he  has 
only  got  one  trouser  on," — to  quote 
from  a  letter  to  Mr.  Brooks's  father, — 
^^and  is  very  much  in  the  condition 
of  ^Diddle,  diddle,  dumpling,  my  son 
John.' "  Most  serious,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  the  impressions  made  by  cer- 
tain sights.  At  Dresden  he  sees  the 
^^  Madonna  di  San  Sisto,"  and  writes 
home:  ^^I  will  not  say  anything  about 
it,  because  there  is  no  use  trying  to  tell 
what  a  man  feels  who  has  been  waiting 
to  enjoy  something  for  fifteen  years, 
and,  when  it  comes,  finds  it  is  some- 
thing unspeakably  beyond  what  he  had 
dreamed."  A  beautiful  copy  of  the 
picture,  by  the  way,  hung  in  front  of 
his  study  desk  through  all  the  last  years 
of  his  life.  In  Egypt  he  says  :  '  ^  I  went 
and  stood  in  the  shadow  of  the  Sphinx, 
and  looked  up  into  her  vast  stone  face. 
If  the  Pyramids  are  great  in  their 
way,  she  is  a  thousand  times  greater 
in  hers,  as  the  grandest  and  most  ex- 


36  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

pressive  monument  of  a  religion  in  the 
world. '^  In  1879,  thirteen  years  later, 
he  uses  his  remembrance  of  the  Dres- 
den Madonna  and  the  Sphinx  to  illus- 
trate, in  a  lecture  to  Philadelphia  di- 
vinity students,  the  contrasts  between 
the  religions  of  the  West  and  of  the 
East.  ^'The  Sphinx  has  life  in  her 
human  face  wTitten  into  a  riddle,  a 
puzzle,  a  mocking  bewilderment.  The 
Virgin's  face  is  full  of  a  mystery  we 
cannot  fathom,  but  it  unfolds  to  us  a 
thousand  of  the  mysteries  of  life.  It 
does  not  mock,  but  blesses  us.  The 
Egyptian  woman  is  alone  amid  the 
sands,  to  be  worshipped,  not  loved. 
The  Christian  woman  has  her  child 
clasped  in  her  arms,  enters  into  the 
societies  and  sympathies  of  men,  and 
claims  no  worsliip  except  love.^'  These 
citations  will  justify  themselves,  if  they 
show  with  what  permanence  and  to 
what  good  purpose  the  impressions  of 
Mr.    Brooks's  travels  entered  into   the 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  37 

work  of  his  life.  Perhaps  even  a  more 
vivid  showing  of  the  inter-relation  be- 
tween what  he  saw  and  what  he  thought 
could  be  made  by  comparing  passages 
from  his  letters  from  India  with  his  ut- 
tered opinions  at  home  in  unwavering 
support  of  foreign  missions. 

Our  present  concern,  however,  is  with 
the  rector  of  Holy  Trinity  Church, 
Philadelphia,  who  did  not  return  to  his 
parish  until  the  autumn  of  1866.  The 
long  rest  fitted  him  for  taking  up  his 
duties  —  which  to  a  rare  degree  were 
also  his  pleasures  —  with  great  hearti- 
ness. In  the  absurd  demonstrations  in 
Philadelphia  against  letting  negroes  ride 
in  the  street  cars,  Mr.  Brooks  was  found 
precisely  where  his  path  through  the 
war-time  must  have  led  him, —  on  the 
side  of  the  race  which  Lincoln  had  set 
free.  Regarding  another  phenomenon 
of  Philadelphia  streets,  we  are  told  that 
he  rejoiced  in  the  fact  that  the  city  was 
so  laid  out,  with  streets  of  small  houses 


38  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

between  the  avenues  of  the  rich,  that 
the  poor  could  never  be  lost  to  sight. 
For  them  and  for  the  rich  he  labored 
with  an  equal  zeal.  As  the  report  of 
these  labors  spread  abroad,  the  opportu- 
nities to  go  elsewhere  began  to  arise. 
One  of  them  brought  with  it  the  possi- 
bility of  a  quieter  life  in  the  presidency 
of  Kenyon  College  at  Gambler,  Ohio. 
But  the  quieter  life  never  appealed  so 
strongly  to  Mr.  Brooks  as  the  turmoil 
of  the  city  j  and  in  this  case  there  was  an 
additional  reason  for  declining  the  prof- 
fered place.  ^^  His  chin  dropped  into  his 
collar, ' '  writes  a  friend  who  recalls  the  act 
of  decision;  and  he  said,  ^^  ^No!  they 
wouldn't  let  me  have  free  swing,  and 
I  wouldn't  take  the  post  unless  they 
did.'  "  The  call  to  assume  the  rector- 
ship of  Trinity  Church,  Boston,  must 
have  carried  with  it  a  more  hopeful 
l^romise  of  the  ^^free  swing";  for  in 
November  of  18G9  he  began  the  rector- 
ship which  filled  the  greater  part  of  his 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  39 

active  life  and  is  more  closely  associ- 
ated than  any  other  work  with  his 
name. 


IV. 

The  call  to  Boston  was  something  far 
more  to  Phillips  Brooks  than  a  mere  call 
to  a  new  parish.  It  was  a  summons 
home.  Though  Trinity  Church  was  not 
the  church  of  his  boyhood,  its  parish- 
ioners might  almost  as  well  have  been 
the  families  he  had  known  at  St.  Paul's  ; 
for  they  represented  practically  the  same 
element  in  Boston  society.  The  indi- 
viduals, however,  could  hardly  have 
drawn  him  so  strongly  from  congenial 
surroundings  and  wide  opportunities  in 
Philadelphia  as  the  fact  that  Boston  wjis 
the  city  of  his  birth.  What  this  means 
to  every  Bostonian  like  Phillips  Brooks, 
hardly  any  one  but  such  a  Bostonian  can 
realize.  If  any  proof  were  needed  to 
show  that  his  love  for  the  place  was 
something  far  beyond  a  mere  sentimental 
feeling,  it  would  be  necessary  only  to 
look  at  such  of  his  writings  as  '^  A  Cen- 
tury of  Church  Growth,"  in  the  Memo- 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  41 

rial  History  of  Boston,  his  addresses  at 
the  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  commemo- 
ration of  the  founding  of  the  First 
Church  in  Boston  and  the  similar  cele- 
bration at  the  Boston  Latin  School,  at 
his  historical  sermon  when  the  new 
Trinity  Church  was  completed,  and  at 
his  many  utterances  with  reference  to 
Harvard  College.  They  all  reveal  the 
mind  of  one  who  not  only  loved,  but 
knew  his  native  city,  its  past  and  its 
present.  On  returning  from  one  of  his 
trips  abroad,  he  is  said  to  have  ex- 
claimed, ^^  There  is  nothing  on  earth  so 
good  as  being  a  minister  in  the  city  of 
Boston."  And  very  shortly  before  his 
death,  according  to  the  same  reporter  of 
his  words,  he  said  to  one  of  his  friends, 
'  '■  What  do  you  suppose  I  have  been  do- 
ing to-day  I  Why,  just  walking  around 
Boston  and  looking  at  the  streets  and 
the  people."  Even  Walt  Whitman 
could  not  have  taken  a  truer  delight  in 
his  Manahatta.     Yet  the  call  to  the  new 


42  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

parish,  like  the  earlier  call  to  the  one  he 
was  leaving,  could  not  be  accepted  until 
it  was  urged  upon  him  so  strongly  that 
nothing  but  accei3tance  was  possible. 
One  may  well  imagine  that  among  the 
persistent  Boston  vestrymen  who  would 
not  take  No  for  an  answer  were  some  of 
those  who  had  been  present  at  the  Har- 
vard Commemoration. 

The  old  sexton  of  Trinity  Church, 
Boston,  to  which  Phillips  Brooks  came 
in  1869,  is  remembered  for  consistently 
driving  the  poor  into  the  galleries  and 
giving  to  rich  visitors  the  vacant  seats 
on  the  floor.  If  he  did  this,  it  was  by  a 
tacit  or  expressed  permission  of  the  au- 
thorities ;  and  it  is  hardly  necessary  to 
say  more  of  the  condition  of  formalism 
into  which  the  i^arish  had  been  brought, 
even  by  rectors  of  so  many  good  abilities 
as  Bishop  Eastburn's.  Evidently,  just 
such  an  one  as  Phillips  Brooks  was 
needed  to  bring  a  new  spirit  into  the  old 
gray,  square- towered  church  in  Summer 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  43 

Street.  The  spirit  Avhich  lie  brought  to 
the  parish,  however,  was  soon  seen  to  be 
too  expansive  for  the  old  buikling.  Be- 
fore the  end  of  1870  a  special  meeting  of 
the  '^Proprietors  "  was  called  to  consider 
the  expediency  of  building  in  another 
part  of  the  city.  It  was  promptly  de- 
cided to  leave  the  old  church,  the  legis- 
lature authorized  the  action,  land  was 
bought  in  the  new  Back  Bay  region, 
competitive  designs  for  the  building 
were  invited,  bodies  were  removed  from 
tombs  under  the  old  structure,  when  the 
great  fire  of  1872  destroyed  the  building 
and  left  the  parish  no  alternative  but  to 
carry  out  its  well-formed  plans.  On  the 
night  of  November  10  Phillips  Brooks 
worked  with  a  will  at  rescuing  movable 
things,  and  was  one  of  the  very  last  to 
leave  the  doomed  building.  Mural  tab- 
lets to  Bishop  Parker  and  Bishop  Gris- 
wold  were  destroyed  f  but  the  old  Bible 
was  saved  from  the  desk,  and  from  the 
walls  a  tablet  to  the  memory  of  Dr.  Gar- 


44  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

diner.  It  was  as  if  a  part  of  the  past 
had  been  seized  from  the  burning  and 
carried  on  into  the  future. 

It  was  indeed  a  large  future  for  which 
the  parish,  following  at  every  point  the 
guidance  of  its  rector,  was  preparing 
itself.  He  it  was  who  more  than  any 
one  else  saw  the  attendant  possibilities. 
Henry  Hobson  Richardson,  the  architect 
of  the  new  church,  physically  his  fellow 
and  personally  his  intimate  friend,  found 
in  Mr.  Brooks  a  sympathetic  and  large- 
minded  collaborator.  From  the  very 
beginning  the  preacher  impressed  him- 
self upon  the  building  in  which  his 
words  were  most  frequently  to  be  heard, 
and  at  the  end  it  was  found  that  his  will 
set  aside  $2, 000  from  his  somewhat  nar- 
row fortune  toward  tlie  completion  of 
the  front  of  the  church.  This  has  now 
been  done  ;  and  it  were  well  for  all  who 
look  upon  the  finished  structure  to 
realize  how  largely  the  living  personality 
of  Phillips  Brooks  concerned  itself  with 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  45 

every  detail  for  the  building,  from  the 
preliminary  drawings  of  the  architect  to 
the  final  interior  decorations  of  his  other 
friend,  Mr.  John  La  Farge.  ^^A  man 
has  no  right,"  the  preacher  once  ex- 
claimed in  scorn,  ^' to  give  to  the  tint  of 
his  parlor  walls  that  anxiety  of  thought 
which  belongs  only  to  the  justification 
of  the  ways  of  God  to  man/^  But  to 
the  walls  of  Trinity,  Phillips  Brooks, 
always  keeping  clear  the  distinction  be- 
tween means  and  ends,  could  and  did 
give  of  his  most  effective  thinking. 

The  first  pile  for  the  new  church  was 
driven  April  21,  1873  ;  the  last  stone 
in  the  tower  was  laid  in  July  of  1876  ; 
and  on  February  9,  1877,  the  furnishing 
and  interior  decorations  having  been 
meanwhile  accomplished,  the  church 
was  consecrated.  For  this  occasion  the 
preacher,  by  a  special  appropriateness, 
was  the  Eev.  Dr.  Vinton.  The  friend 
of  his  boyhood  and  of  the  chief  crises  of 
his   manhood   thus   stood   with  Phillips 


46  PHILLIPS   BEOOKS 

Brooks  upon  the  new  threshold  of  his 
broadening  career,  and  gave  him  God- 
speed into  his  great  future. 

Before  proceeding  to  see  just  how 
this  future  unfolded  itself,  we  may  well 
pause  for  a  moment  to  look  at  a  hasty, 
spontaneous  picture  drawn  by  one  quite 
unprepared  for  the  preaching  he  de- 
scribes. The  time  of  the  sketch  is  in 
the  period  between  the  burning  of  the 
old  church  and  the  comi)letion  of  the 
new, — a  time  when  Trinity  parish  was 
using  Huntington  Hall  in  the  Massachu- 
setts Institute  of  Technology  for  its  ser- 
vices. The  hand  which  drew  the  picture 
was  that  of  Principal  John  Tulloch  of 
St.  Andrews  University  in  Scotland, 
travelling  in  America  in  1874,  and  writ- 
ing thus  from  Boston  to  his  wife:  ^'I 
have  just  heard  the  most  remarkable 
sermon  I  have  ever  heard  in  my  life, — 
I  use  the  word  in  no  American  sense, — 
from  Mr.  Pliillips  Brooks,  an  Episcopal 
clergyman  here  ;    (M{iial    to   the   best   of 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  47 

Frederick  Eobertson's  sermons,  with  a 
vigor  and  force  of  thought  which  he 
has  not  always.  I  have  never  heard 
preaching  like  it,  and  you  know  how 
slow  I  am  to  praise  preachers.  So  much 
thought  and  so  much  life  combined, 
such  a  reach  of  mind,  and  such  a  dei)th 
of  insight  and  soul.  I  was  electrified. 
I  could  have  got  up  and  shouted.'' 


These  words  of  Principal  Tullocli's 
have  to  do  with  Phillips  Brooks  solely 
as  a  preacher.  Still  regarding  him  en- 
tirely in  this  light,  it  may  be  said  that 
the  year  1877  stood  out  with  a  special 
prominence  in  his  career.  Not  only  was 
it  marked  by  the  completion  of  the  new 
Trinity  Church,  but  in  a  way  perhaps 
even  more  intimate  and  significant, — by 
the  delivery  of  his  Lectures  on  Freaching 
at  the  Divinity  School  of  Yale  College. 
The  volume  containing  these  lectures 
tells  us  far  more  about  Phillips  Brooks 
himself  than  the  most  speaking  volume 
of  his  sermons.  It  is,  in  effect,  the  apolo- 
gia pro  Slid  vita.  In  it  he  explains  him- 
self by  setting  forth,  at  once  minutely 
and  broadly,  his  ideals  for  preaching  and 
preachers.  As  a  book,  of  course  it  is 
intended  for  clerical  readers  ;  but  it  is 
written  with  such  a  delightful  blending 
of  wisdom  with  th(^  (piiet  humor  which 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  49 

eminently  belonged  to  its  author,  and 
contains  so  plentiful  a  measure  of  truth 
and  sincerity,  that  it  is  a  book  for  no  one 
class.  The  clergy,  one  may  well  imagine, 
might  prefer  to  have  the  laity  leave  it 
alone  ;  for  it  sets  standards  of  clerical  pur- 
pose and  achievement  which,  to  say  the 
least,  are  not  commonly  attained.  In 
forming  any  true  estimate  of  Phillips 
Brooks,  the  Lectures  on  Preaching  must 
inevitably  be  taken  into  account.  With 
the  two  lectures  on  Tolerance,  delivered 
ten  years  later  to  the  students  of  several 
of  the  Episcopal  theological  schools  in 
the  country,  it  provides  the  best  possi- 
ble background  for  considering  Phillips 
Brooks  in  his  pulpit.  To  write  about 
him  at  all,  without  making  some  special 
scrutiny  of  his  individual  qualities  as  a 
preacher,  would  be  to  shirk  an  obvious 
duty. 

At  the  very  beginning  of  his  Lectures 
to  the  Yale  students,  Mr.  Brooks  insisted 
that  real  preaching  was  the  expression 


50  PHILLIPS   BEOOKS 

of  ^' Truth  through  Personality.'^  Of 
these  two  elements  every  true  sermon 
must  be  compounded.  The  excess  or 
the  defect  of  either  quality  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  other  causes  the  sermon  to 
be  less  truly  a  sermon  than  it  should  and 
might  be.  If  this,  then,  is  preaching, 
what  is  to  be  said  of  the  preaching  of 
Phillips  Brooks  in  the  light  of  his  own 
definition? 

In  the  first  place,  what  was  the  truth 
as  he  saw  it  ?  It  was  eminently  a  simple 
thing.  It  lay  for  him  within  the  form- 
ulae of  the  Church,  but  did  not  press 
itself  violently  against  the  boundaries 
of  all  these  formula.  ^^The  fatherhood 
of  God  and  the  brotlierhood  of  man" 
has  become  a  cant  phrase,  but  perhaps 
there  is  no  other  wliich  sums  up  more 
succinctly  the  tenets  of  the  Christian 
faith  which  Phillips  Brooks  most  de- 
lighted to  emphasize.  The  shortcoming 
of  the  phnuse  is  that  it  does  not  bind 
together  the  brotlierhood  and  the  father- 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  51 

hood  to  which  it  refers  by  the  strong 
link  of  sonship  through  Jesus  Christ. 
It  was  in  the  workings  of  this  relation- 
ship that  the  preacher^  s  faith  in  both 
God  and  man  was  strongest.  Because 
he  left  the  complexities  of  belief  to 
otherSj  he  could  hold  the  most  positive 
convictions  himself,  and  could  advise 
the  beginners  in  the  ministry  ;  ^  ^  Preach 
positively  what  you  believe.  Never 
preach  what  you  do  not  believe,  or  deny 
what  you  do  believe. ' '  Doctrine  and  dog- 
ma have  come  to  be  regarded  as  words 
of  danger  and  rigidity.  The  advice  of 
Phillips  Brooks  was,  ^^  Preach  doctrine, 
preach  all  the  doctrine  that  you  know, 
and  learn  forever  more  and  more  j  but 
preach  it  always,  not  that  men  may  be- 
lieve, but  that  men  may  be  saved  by 
believing  it.''  The  subjects  of  sermons 
were,  in  his  opinion,  to  be  ^^  mostly  eternal 
truths,  and  let  the  timeliness  come  in  the 
illustration  of  those  truths  by,  and  their 
application  to,  the  events  of  current  life." 


52  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

Thus,  indeed,  it  was  the  simplest  truth  of 
the  gospel  which  he  felt  himself  called  to 
proclaim,  not  a  bundle  of  separate  mes- 
sages for  separate  classes  of  men.  The 
very  same  sermon  could  serve  its  purpose 
for  him  at  Wellesley  College  and  at  the 
Concord  State's  Prison.  A  Boston  minis- 
ter, invited  to  address  about  eight  hundred 
physicians  at  a  dinner  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Medical  Association,  has  told  of 
his  remarking  to  Mr.  Brooks,  ^^I  don't 
know  what  under  the  sun  to  say, ' '  and  of 
receiving  the  characteristic  response: 
^^It  doesn't  make  much  difference  what 
you  say,  so  you  do  not  say  what  they 
expect.  Preach  the  gospel."  This  wiis 
what  he  himself  always  stood  ready  to 
do,  and  the  most  and  the  least  critical 
were  equally  ready  to  hear  him.  At 
one  time  during  an  early  ^ '  Moody  and 
Sankey  revival"  in  Boston,  Mr.  Moody 
was  ill,  and  Mr.  Brooks  was  asked  to 
preach  in  his  place.  The  great  ^ '  taber- 
nacle"   put    up    for    the    services  was 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  53 

thronged ;  and,  as  the  people  poured 
out  of  it,  one  man,  typical  of  the  thou- 
sands who  were  present,  was  heard  to 
say:  ^^Why,  here  we  have  a  preacher 
of  our  own  just  as  good  as  Moody." 
Mr.  Brooks  indeed  was  often  at  his  best 
— -even  according  to  the  standards  of  the 
fastidious  —  before  such  miscellaneous 
gatherings  of  the  ^^ unchurched"  as  he 
found  at  the  Sunday  evening  services 
at  Faneuil  Hall,  the  Globe  Theatre, 
and  the  Grand  Opera  House.  Once, 
when  he  was  asked  in  England  what 
sermon  he  was  going  to  preach  on  a 
certain  Sunday,  his  natural  response 
was,  ^^Oh,  I  have  only  one  sermon." 
And,  truly,  through  everything  he  said 
and  wrote,  one  message,  one  simple  inter- 
pretation of  spiritual  truth  as  he  saw  it 
to  men  as  he  knew  them,  might  have 
been  traced.  The  appeal  of  his  message 
was  not  only  to  the  mind,  not  only  to 
the  heart,  but,  in  these  perfectly  chosen 
words  of   his  own,    ^Ho  that  spiritual 


54  PHILLIPS   BEOOKS 

reason  which  is  no  special  function  of 
the  nature,  but  is  the  best  action  of  the 
whole  nature  working  together,  the  affec- 
tion and  the  will  being  partners  of  the 
brain. ' ' 

This  definition  of  the  receptive  facul- 
ties of  his  hearers  shows  something  of  his 
understanding  of  their  natures.  His 
knowledge  of  men  was  probably  even 
exceeded  by  his  faith  in  them.  To  ap- 
preciate fully  the  qualities  of  his  preach- 
ing and  of  his  feeling  about  preaching 
in  general,  it  is  necessary  to  give  quite 
as  much  thought  to  his  belief  in  men  as 
to  his  faith  in  God.  When  he  found 
that  his  complete  trust  in  any  individual 
had  been  misplaced,  we  are  told  that 
his  sense  of  personal  grief  and  loss  was 
almost  as  great  as  if  a  part  of  his  belief 
in  the  Deity  had  been  taken  away  from 
him.  His  own  words  from  the  lecture 
on  ^^The  Ministry  for  our  Age''  define 
the  constant  attitude  of  his  mind  and 
spirit  toward   his  fellow-men,   and  un- 


PHILLIPS   BKOOKS  55 

consciously  define  himself:  ^' There  is 
in  every  man's  heart,  if  you  could  only 
trust  it,  a  power  of  appreciating  genu- 
ine spiritual  truth,  of  being  moved  into 
unselfish  gratitude  by  the  love  of  God. 
Continually  he  who  trusts  it  finds  it 
there.  A  hundred  men  stand  like  the 
Spanish  magnates  on  the  shore,  and 
say :  ^  You  must  not  venture  far  away. 
There  is  no  land  beyond.  Stay  here, 
and  develop  what  we  have.'  One 
brave  and  truthful  man  like  Columbus 
believes  that  the  complete  world  is  com- 
plete, and  sails  for  a  fair  land  beyond 
the  sea,  and  finds  it.  The  minister  who 
succeeds  is  the  minister  who,  in  the 
midst  of  a  sordid  age,  trusts  the  heart  of 
man  who  is  the  child  of  God,  and  knows 
that  it  is  not  all  sordid,  and  boldly 
speaks  to  it  of  God,  his  Father,  as  if  he 
expected  it  to  answer.  And  it  does 
answer ;  and  other  preachers  who  have 
not  believed  in  man,  and  have  talked  to 
him  in  low  planes,  and  preached  to  him 


56  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

half-gospels  which  they  think  were  all 
that  he  could  stand,  look  on,  and  wonder 
at  their  brother- preacher's  unaccount- 
able success.'' 

A  score  of  other  passages  from,  the 
Lectures  on  Preaching  might  advan- 
tageously be  taken  to  illustrate  points 
of  positive  biographical  interest.  To 
the  sermons  themselves  less  than  to  these 
lectures  on  sermons  may  we  look  for  the 
motives  which  underlay  the  preaching 
—  that  is  to  say,  the  life  —  of  Phillips 
Brooks.  The  sermons  were  the  sepa- 
rate expressions  of  the  general  principles, 
which,  as  occasion  required,  he  set  forth 
in  lectures  for  the  guidance  of  his 
younger  brothers  in  the  ministry.  The 
lectures  on  Tolerance  contain  one  pas- 
sage so  characteristic  of  Phillips  Brooks 
in  his  estimate  of  the  truth  to  be 
blended  with  his  personality  into  ser- 
mons that  the  reader  will  surely  pre- 
fer it  to  any  recasting  of  its  definition 
of  a  man's  relation  to  his  fellow-men. 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  57 

^^  Every  true  Churchman, —  that  is, 
every  man  who  truly  values  his  place 
in  the  Christian  Church, — it  seems  to 
me,  must  think  of  himself  as  standing 
in  the  midst  of  four  concentric  circles. 
He  is  the  centre  of  them  all.  They  rep- 
resent the  different  groups  of  his  fellow- 
men  with  whom  he  has  to  do.  They 
sweep  in  widening  circumference  around 
the  spot  of  earth  on  which  he  stands, 
and  make  the  different  horizons  of  his 
life.  What  are  they  ?  Outermost  of  all 
there  is  the  broad  circle  of  humanity. 
All  men,  simply  as  men,  are  something 
to  this  man.  It  is  the  consciousness 
homo  sum,  the  consciousness  which  the 
Latin  poet  crowded  into  his  immor- 
tal line,  which  fills  this  circle  with  vi- 
tality. Next  within  this  lies  the  circle 
of  religion,  smaller  than  the  other,  be- 
cause all  men  are  not  religious,  but 
large  enough  to  include  all  those  of 
every  name,  of  every  creed,  who  count 
their  life  the  subject  and   the   care  of 


58  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

a  divine  life  which  is  their  king.  Next 
within  this  lies  the  circle  of  Christian- 
ity, including  all  those  who — under  any 
conception  of  Him  and  of  their  duty 
toward  Him  —  honestly  own  for  their 
Master  Jesus  Christ.  And  then,  inmost 
of  all,  there  is  the  circle  of  the  man's 
own  peculiar  Church,  the  group  of  those 
whose  thought  and  worship  is  in  general 
identical  with  his  who  stands  in  the 
centre,  and  feels  all  these  four  circles 
surrounding  him."  Intensely  feeling 
the  reality  of  his  relation  to  the  men 
within  all  four  of  those  circles,  the 
preacher  could  confidently  declare,  '^I 
cannot  live  truly  with  the  men  of  my 
own  Church  unless  I  also  have  a  con- 
sciousness of  common  life  with  all  Chris- 
tian believers,  with  all  religious  men, 
with  all  mankind.''  Who  shall  say  that 
the  true  secret  of  his  power  lay  any- 
where but  in  the  universal  symi>athy 
out  of  which  these  words  are  spoken? 
Through   this  very  belief  of  his  in  all 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  59 

mankind,  he  could  preach  with  the 
greater  zeal  his  other  belief:  '^Not  man 
with  religion  is  something  more,  but 
man  without  religion  is  something  less 
than  man." 

It  will  be  clear  to  every  reader  with 
a  regard  for  the  things  to  which  the  life 
of  Phillips  Brooks  was  devoted  that  his 
view  of  these  things  was  entirely  inspir- 
ing and  uplifting.  No  wonder,  it  may 
weU  be  said,  that  beliefs  so  human  and 
magnanimous  found  their  utterance  in 
words  so  capable  of  stirring  the  heart  of 
man.  It  was  indeed  as  he  told  the  theo- 
logical students  at  New  Haven:  ^^Let 
a  man  be  a  true  preacher,  really  utter- 
ing the  truth  through  his  own  personal- 
ity, and  it  is  strange  how  men  will 
gather  to  listen  to  him.  We  hear  that 
the  day  of  the  pulpit  is  past  j  and  then 
some  morning  the  voice  of  a  true 
preacher  is  heard  in  the  land,  and  all  the 
streets  are  full  of  men  crowding  to  hear 
him,  just  exactly  as  were  the  streets  of 


60  PHILLIPS   BEOOKS 

Constantinople  when  Chrysostom  was 
going  to  preach  at  the  Church  of  the 
Apostles,  or  the  streets  of  London  when 
Latimer  was  bravely  telling  his  truth  at 
St.  PauPs."  Now  that  the  words  which 
men  thronged  to  hear  from  the  lips  of 
Phillii^s  Brooks  can  reach  us  only 
through  the  medium  of  print,  it  is  easier 
to  appreciate  the  wisdom  which  he  dis- 
played in  giving  to  Personality  an  im- 
portance equal  to  that  of  Truth  as  a 
quality  of  the  sermon.  On  many  sides 
the  complaint  is  heard  that  the  sermons 
of  Pliilliixs  Brooks  are  disappointing 
reading ;  and  so,  in  a  measure,  they 
certainly  are.  Especially  for  one  who 
never  saw  him  in  the  pulpit,  and  is  con- 
sequently unable  to  bring  the  visualiz- 
ing memory  to  bear  upon  the  printed 
page,  must  the  need  of  the  personality 
make  itself  felt.  '^Now  and  then,'^ 
said  Mr.  Brooks  himself,  '^you  do  find  a 
volume  of  sermons  whieli,  as  it  were, 
keep  tlieir  author  in  them,   so  that,  as 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  61 

you  read  them,  you  feel  him  present  in 
the  room.  But,  ordinarily,  reading  ser- 
mons is  like  listening  to  an  echo. ' '  The 
echo  in  the  world  of  nature  loses  half 
its  interest,  if  the  voice  to  which  it 
responds  is  unheard  or  unknown.  In 
like  manner  for  those  who  have  known 
Phillips  Brooks,  by  no  means  the  least 
interest  and  value  of  the  printed  ser- 
mons lie  in  their  service  as  a  sort  of 
magic  glass  through  which  the  reader 
can  look,  and  see  and  hear  the  preacher 
at  the  height  of  his  living  power,  can 
^^feel  him  present  in  the  room"  as  other 
readers  cannot.  I  am  the  more  inclined 
to  believe  this  is  true,  and  to  be  sorry 
for  those  who  in  reading  the  sermons  are 
unable  to  associate  the  Personality  with 
the  Truth,  because  of  my  own  experi- 
ence in  finding  the  far  greater  satisfac- 
tion in  sermons  which  I  first  heard  from 
the  preacher's  own  lips.  Other  sermons 
may  be  intrinsically  better  ;  but  in  these 
the  human  voice  may  be  most  clearly 


62  PHILLIPS  BEOOKS 

heard,  the  human  presence  most  defi- 
nitely realized.  And,  because  this  is 
true,  one  is  willing  to  admit  at  once 
that  the  sermons,  for  all  their  revelations 
of  spiritual  insight  and  an  excellently 
ordered  mind,  may  not  be  important  con- 
tributions to  theology  or  really  extraor- 
dinary as  feats  of  the  intellect.  ^^The 
affection  and  the  will  being  partners  of 
the  brain, ' '  one  may  nevertheless  find  in 
them,  whether  the  preacher's  figure 
rises  up  behind  the  page  or  not,  many 
things  which  must  appeal  with  potency 
to  the  ^^ spiritual  reason."  A  pui-ely 
practical  suggestion  to  him  who  would 
come  nearest  to  getting  their  original 
effect  is  that  they  should  be  read  with  all 
possible  rapidity.  They  were  written  to 
be  spoken  so ;  and  reading  them  in  the 
same  way,  bearing  the  while  with  cer- 
tain repetitions  and  elaborations  which 
belong  more  truly  to  words  for  the  ear 
than  to  words  for  the  eye,  any  one  may 
gain  a  certain  conception  of  their  origi- 
nal effect. 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  63 

At  best,  however,  this  conception  must 
be  inadequate.  The  actual  personality 
of  the  preacher  was  essential  to  the  full 
force  of  what  he  had  to  say.  Let  us  try 
to  see  through  what  medium  the  truth 
as  he  saw  it  was  delivered  to  men.  In 
the  great  round  pulpit  of  Trinity  Church, 
inviting  its  occujiant  to  look  out  in 
every  direction  except  behind  him,  the 
figure  of  Phillij)s  Brooks  comes  most 
familiarly  to  mind.  Six  feet  four  inches 
in  height,  symmetrically  massive  of  fig- 
ure, clad  in  the  black  Geneva  gown, 
of  which  the  shadow  happily  grows  less 
each  year  in  the  pulpits  of  the  Episcopal 
church,  he  moves  with  swift  dignity  to 
his  place.  The  text  is  announced  in  a 
quiet  voice,  sometimes  too  low  to  reach 
all  corners  of  the  great  structure ;  and 
the  sermon  begins  on  the  same  gentle 
pitch.  Woe  to  him  whose  ears  are  not 
quick  to  hear,  for  though  the  volume  of 
voice  increases  as  the  sermon  proceeds, 
the  speed  of  delivery  begins  at  a  maxi- 


64  PHILLIPS   BEOOKS 

mum,  in  keeping  with  his  habit  of 
plunging  into  the  very  midst  of  his  sub- 
ject, and  taxes  the  unaccustomed  listener 
to  the  utmost.  The  average  speaker 
gives  forth  about  120  words  to  the  min- 
ute :  from  190  to  215  are  said  to  have 
poured  from  the  lips  of  Phillips  Brooks 
in  the  same  space  of  time.  But  the  grad- 
ual raising  of  the  voice,  together  with 
a  remarkable  clearness  of  enunciation, 
diminishes  the  difaculty  of  keeping  pace 
with  the  speaker's  extraordinary  speed. 
The  voice  itself  may  perhaps  best  be 
described  as  carrying  with  it  rather  too 
much  breath  to  satisfy  the  most  fastid- 
ious, yet  so  full  of  sympathy,  tenderness, 
pleading,  and  conviction  as  to  make  one 
quite  impatient  of  the  elocutionary  stand- 
ards which  would  condemn  it.  The 
gestures  are  as  nothing.  A  raising  of 
the  hand  and  pressing  it  to  the  side,  a 
toss  of  the  head  as  if  in  protest  against 
the  human  limitations  wliich  place  any 
barrier,    physical    or    mental,    between 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  65 

man  and  the  utterance  of  truth  to  him, — 
these  are  all.  If  the  total  effect  is  not 
eloquence  of  the  highest  order,  one 
knows  not  what  to  call  it. 

Such  are  the  tangible  expressions  of 
the  personality  which  rises  before  the 
mind,  remembering  Phillips  Brooks. 
This  personality  expresses  itself,  how- 
ever, in  another  manner  not  quite  so 
obvious,  yet  intimately  connected  with 
an  important  phase  of  the  preacher's 
conception  of  the  truth.  What  he  be- 
lieved with  his  mind  about  men's  capac- 
ity for  spiritual  things  he  seemed  to 
declare  by  his  mere  physical  presence. 
^'How  often,"  writes  Bishop  Clark,  ^^I 
have  heard  him  say,  ^  I  love  to  preach '  ! " 
In  talking  about  ^'The  Teaching  of  Ee- 
ligion, ' '  Mr.  Brooks  once  said  :  ^  ^  A  man 
will  dig  his  ditch  better  if  he  knows  and 
cares  for  the  great  plan  of  giving  the 
thirsty  city  water.  Still,  he  can  dig  his 
ditch  for  his  dollar  a  day.  But  a  man 
cannot  really  preach   at  all   unless  he 


66  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

knows  why  he  preaches,  unless  he  is  in 
some  degree  eager  to  make  men  know 
the  Christ  whom  he  knows.  ^  ^  This  very 
love  of  preaching,  based  upon  a  thorough 
belief  in  what  he  had  to  say  and  in  the 
need  of  men  to  hear  it,  shone  out 
through  him  whenever  he  rose  to  speak, 
and  gave  to  his  words  a  power  of  con- 
vincing which  the  words  of  a  man  less 
completely  convinced  in  his  own  heart 
could  not  carry  with  them.  Mr.  Brooks, 
we  are  told,  preferred  never  to  speak 
without  preparation,  and  we  may  be 
perfectly  sure  that  he  never  fell  into 
what  he  counted  ^  '•  the  crowning  disgrace 
of  a  man^s  ministry,^'  — writing  his  ser- 
mons on  Saturday  night ;  but  whether 
he  read  the  sermon  from  his  fluently 
written  manuscript  or  spoke  it  without 
recourse  to  notes  of  any  kind,  he  added 
to  the  truth  with  which  he  dealt  the 
winning  and  compelling  power  of  his 
irresistible  peisonality.  Illnstrating  all 
his  own   deli  nit  ions   of  good   preaching 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  67 

and  true  preachers,  he  stood  iu  his  pul- 
pit before  and  above  his  generation  as 
the  very  messenger  of  God  to  man. 


VI. 

The  personality  of  Phillii^s  Brooks 
displayed  itself  in  many  ways  outside  of 
the  pulpit.  The  qualities  of  the  preacher, 
to  be  sure,  were  those  which  most  clearly 
distinguished  him  from  men  in  general  ,- 
but  it  would  be  entirely  unfair  to  ignore 
the  other  qualities  through  which  he 
expressed  his  nature.  How  pre-emi- 
nently he  preferred  to  think  of  him- 
self as  the  preacher  rather  than  the 
writer  or  speaker  or  anything  else  may 
be  inferred  from  this  suggestion  to  theo- 
logical students:  ^^ I  think  that  it  is 
good  for  every  minister  to  write  some- 
thing besides  sermons, —  books,  articles, 
essays,  at  least  letters, —  provided  hehiis 
control  of  himself  and  still  remains  the 
preacher,  and  does  not  become  an  ama- 
teur in  literature  instead."  His  own 
control  of  himself  in  this  direction  was 
most  rigid.  On  one  occiision,  of  which 
the  present  writer  happens  to  know,  a 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  69 

Christmas  carol  which  Mr.  Brooks  wrote 
for  his  Sunday-school  was  secured  for 
publication  in  a  secular  periodical  for  the 
young.  The  publishers  could  do  noth- 
ing less  than  to  send  him  a  liberal  check 
for  the  few  stanzas,  asking  that  it  might 
be  applied  to  the  purposes  of  the  Sunday- 
school;  but  the  check  came  promptly 
back  with  thanks  and  so  courteously 
firm  a  note  that  the  ^  incident  was 
closed."  Mr.  Brooks  was  evidently  not 
to  be  enticed  into  forgetting  for  an  in- 
stant that  he  was  a  minister,  and  not  a 
minor  poet.  And  thus  in  all  the  varied 
functions  of  his  life  he  was  consistently 
himself. 

To  the  complaint  that  he  lacked  the 
administrative  faculties  needed  by  the 
modern  city  clergyman,  there  was  always 
a  sufficient  reply  in  the  mere  existence 
of  St.  Andrew's  chapel,  established  by 
Trinity  Church,  of  the  Trinity  House, 
the  Trinity  Club,  the  industrial  and  em- 
ployment societies    of   the    i^arish,    the 


70  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

flourishing  Sunday-school,  and  many 
other  expressions  of  parochial  activity. 
If  there  was  one  thing  which  he  es- 
pecially resented  at  the  lat«r  time  when 
all  his  motives  and  actions  were  vigor- 
ously scrutinized,  it  was  the  charge  that 
his  executive  ability  was  weak.  It  is 
true,  the  details  of  parish  management 
were  often  committed  to  other  hands; 
but  the  very  best  of  administrators  fre- 
quently are  those  who  best  know  how  to 
utilize  the  abilities  of  others.  A  part 
of  the  wisdom  Mr.  Brooks  displayed  in 
administering  his  parish  lay  in  expend- 
ing his  own  force  where  it  could  do  most 
good, —  in  the  pulpit, —  and  in  placing 
much  of  the  other  work  precisely  where 
it  could  best  be  performed.  The  parish 
itself  found  no  fault  with  his  methods. 
The  state  of  feeling  constantly  existing 
between  him  and  them  was  indeed  well 
indicated  —  so  far  as  outward  things  re- 
veal inward  —  by  the  attempt  upon  one 
occtision    to    make    the    rector's  salary 


PHILLIPS  BEOOKS  71 

larger,  and  by  his  absolute  refusal  to 
listen  te  any  such  proposition.  It  was 
for  many  activities  besides  preaching, 
however,  that  his  energies  were  re- 
served. His  accessibility  to  all  comers 
at  all  hours  was  so  well  known  as  to 
bring  down  upon  him  many  ^^devasta- 
tors of  the  day."  When  he  became  a 
bishop,  and  was  urged  to  adopt  office 
hours  in  order  to  shield  himself  from  in- 
numerable visitors,  he  exclaimed,  ^^God 
save  the  day  when  they  won't  come  to 
me  ! ' '  and  held  his  time  no  less  at  the 
disposal  of  every  one  who  might  ask  for 
it.  "With  his  correspondence  the  same 
principle  was  pursued.  Xo  matter  how 
trivial  the  letters  which  poured  in  upon 
him  day  by  day,  he  made  himself  ac- 
countable for  answers  to  them  all.  His 
own  handwriting  was  uncommonly  clear, 
and  one  is  not  sorry  to  hear  that  the 
righteous  indignation  of  which  he  was 
thoroughly  capable  sometimes  showed 
itself  when  illegible  letters  came  to  him. 


72  PHILLIPS  BEOOKS 

^^What  right  has  that  man  to  save  his 
time  in  writing  badly  and  steal  mine?" 
And,  again  to  quote  from  Bishop  Law- 
rence's report  of  his  predecessor's  words  : 
^^  What  a  bit  of  self-conceit  on  the  part 
of  that  student  that  he  should  think  that 
what  he  writes  is  worth  my  while  to 
decipher  ! ' '  Yet  the  probability  is  that 
the  ill-written  words  were  not  only  de- 
ciphered, but  considerately  answered. 

If  the  offending  student  was  an  under- 
graduate at  Harvard,  Phillips  Brooks 
could  have  been  nothing  but  lenient  to 
him.  The  college  for  many  years  was 
practically  his  second  parish.  In  its 
hold  upon  his  affections,  it  probably 
stood  second  to  no  institution  of  what- 
ever sort.  All  the  force  of  hereditary 
and  youthful  homage  bound  it  closely  to 
him  ;  and  the  college  in  turn  bound  him 
to  itself  by  its  pride  in  everything  he 
did  for  it,  from  offering  the  prayer  at 
the  Commemoration  service  to  deliver- 
ing the  sermon  at  the  two  hundred  and 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  73 

fiftieth  anniversary  and  becoming  one 
of  its  ^^ University  Preachers."  There 
vras  undoubtedly  a  reason,  stronger  than 
that  of  mere  association,  for  this  interest 
of  Phillips  Brooks  in  Harvard  College. 
Bishop  Lawrence  has  told  us  of  ^^one 
great  overhanging  disappointment  which 
weighed  upon  him  in  some  of  his  darker 
moments,  and  which  drove  him  to  some 
of  his  most  desperate  work. ' '  The  dis- 
appointment ' '  was  that,  with  some  ex- 
ceptions, the  best  and  strongest  manhood 
did  not  come  into  the  fulness  of  com- 
munion with  Jesus  Christ."  To  one 
who  believed  with  the  intensity  of  Phil- 
lips Brooks  both  in  man  and  in  God, 
the  realization  of  this  fact  must  indeed 
have  brought  moments  of  bitterness. 
But  it  is  evident  that  with  them  must 
have  come  the  determination  to  reach 
the  men  in  whom  he  believed,  and  to  do 
it  before  they  had  come  to  years  of  in- 
flexibility. Harvard  College,  his  own  Al- 
alia Mater,  was  at  his  very  doors,  crowded 


74  PHILLIPS   BEOOKS 

with  the  youth  who  year  after  year  were 
stepping  out  into  the  foremost  ranks  of 
American  manhood.  It  was  an  op- 
portunity from  which  Phillips  Brooks 
would  have  been  the  last  to  turn  away, 
even  if  the  college  had  ever  shown  the 
slightest  disposition  to  let  him  do  so. 

In  1870,  only  one  year  after  Mr. 
Brooks  came  to  Boston  from  Philadel- 
phia, he  was  made  an  overseer  of  the 
college,  and  in  later  years,  broken  only 
by  the  intervals  prescribed  by  law,  was 
twice  re-elected.  President  Eliot  has 
made  public  record  of  his  support  of  all 
changes  in  the  college  regulations  which 
should  enlarge  the  freedom  of  the  stu- 
dents, simplify  their  living,  and  develop 
their  capacity  for  self-control.  When 
the  appointment  of  instructors  came  be- 
fore the  board,  Mr.  Brooks  never  raised 
questions  of  the  religious,  political,  or 
philosophical  views  of  the  applicant, 
but  feared  the  effect  of  a  pessimistic 
or  cynical  temper,  and  tried  to  protect 


PHILLIPS  BROOKS  75 

the  college  from  its  baleful  influence. 
Three  times,  in  the  agitation  in  favor 
of  voluntary  chai)el,  he  voted  against 
abandoning  the  old  compulsory  system  ; 
but  in  the  end  his  vote  was  cast  in  favor 
of  the  present  method.  ^^In  the  exist- 
ing state  of  college  opinion  on  the  sub- 
ject/' he  declared,  ^'I  can  no  longer 
have  anything  to  do  with  compulsory 
prayers." 

In  1877  the  college  bestowed  upon 
him  the  degree  of  S.T.D.  ;  and  Mr. 
Brooks  —  who  heard  the  news  of  it  in 
Europe  —  wrote  home  to  his  mother, 
^^I  am  very  sensible  of  the  honor,  but 
hope  people  will  not  begin  to  call  me  by 
the  title."  Nor  did  they,  nor  even 
after  the  dignity  of  '^Doctor"  was  ele- 
vated to  that  of  ^^ Bishop,"  was  it  pos- 
sible for  those  who  really  knew  him  to 
stop  thinking,  and  usually  speaking,  of 
him  simply  as  Mr.  Brooks.  It  was  in 
1881  that  the  title  of  Professor  Brooks 
was   offered  to  him;  and,   as  the  offer 


76  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

came  from  Harvard  College,  and  held 
out  not  only  the  Plummer  Professorshij) 
of  Christian  IMorals,  but  also  the  post  of 
Preacher  to  the  University,  it  was  not  a 
proposition  to  be  carelessly  dismissed. 
After  a  few  days  of  consideration  Mr. 
Brooks  came  to  President  Eliot  to  ask 
if  the  corporation  fully  undei-stood  that 
he  was  a  Trinitarian.  The  president 
told  him  that  the  question  was  not  one 
of  creed, — the  college  wanted  him,  no 
matter  what  his  beliefs  might  be.  After 
a  week  of  further  consideration  he  came 
again  to  the  president,  and  told  him  he 
could  not  accept  the  offer.  But,  in  the 
words  of  President  Eliot,  ' '  he  was  very 
pale  and  grave,  and  he  spoke  like  a 
man  who  had  seen  a  beatific  vision 
which  he  could  not  pursue.  Before  we 
parted,  he  had  assured  me  that  he 
would  do  everything  in  his  power,  short 
of  leaving  Trinity  Church  and  Boston, 
to  further  the  religious  work  of  the  uni- 
versity.     That   promise   he   amj)ly  re- 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  77 

deemed."  Well  skilled  in  reporting 
the  gifts  of  the  sons  of  Harvard  to  their 
mother,  President  Eliot  has  further  de- 
clared of  Phillips  Brooks  :  ^ '  He  was  one 
of  the  greatest  benefactors  the  univer- 
sity has  ever  had ;  for  he  gave  himself, 
his  time,  thought,  and  love,  his  burn- 
ing words,  and  his  convincing  example 
of  purity,  uprightness,  and  manly 
piety." 

The  fulness  of  this  giving  was  not  at- 
tained until  the  present  system  of  ad- 
ministering the  religious  affairs  of  the 
college  was  adopted  in  1886.  Under 
this  system  five  clergymen  of  different 
denominations  divide  the  year  into  por- 
tions, during  which  each  ''University 
Preacher"  in  turn  takes  up  his  resi- 
dence in  the  college  yard,  conducts  the 
voluntary  chapel  service  every  morn- 
ing of  the  week,  and  usually  on  every 
Thursday  afternoon  and  Sunday  even- 
ing. Besides  all  this,  he  holds  himself 
in  readiness,  for  certain  hours  each  day, 


78  PHILLIPS   BEOOKS 

to  see  any  students  wlio  may  wish  to  call 
upon  him.  in  his  rooms  at  Wadsworth 
House.  This  was  a  work  into  which 
Phillips  Brooks  could  not  have  failed  to 
enter  with  zeal ;  and  all  his  beliefs  about 
the  willingness  of  men  to  respond  to  the 
best  teaching  of  spiritual  truth  were 
borne  out  by  the  eagerness  with  which 
the  students  thronged  to  hear  and  see 
him.  Appleton  Chapel,  at  quarter  be- 
fore nine  o'clock  in  the  morning,  has 
never  been  overcrowded,  I  believe,  since 
the  compulsory  prayers  were  aban- 
doned ;  but  on  the  mornings  when  Phil- 
lips Brooks  conducted  the  service  it  was 
far  more  nearly  in  that  condition  than 
at  any  other  morning  services  of  the 
year.  On  Thursday  afternoons  and 
Sunday  nights  when  he  preached,  the 
place  was  sure  to  be  crowded  to  the 
doors.  If  the  students  liked  it,  so  did 
he,  and  in  a  note  to  his  fellow- 
preacher,  Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale, 
he  wrot<^,  ''After  all,  the  true  Christian 
Church  is  Api)leton  Chapel. '^ 


PHILLIPS  BROOKS  79 

Of  his  more  personal  intercourse  with 
the  undergraduates  whom  he  saw  at 
Wadsworth  House,  still  another  of  his 
fellow-preachers  has  written  :  '■ '-  They 
came  to  him  —  as  has  been  said  to  me 
more  than  once  —  afraid  of  his  greatness, 
and  they  went  away  remembering  only 
his  kindness."  The  memories  of  these 
private  interviews  are  now  the  individ- 
ual possessions  of  many  men  who  would 
forget  many  things  they  learned  at  Cam- 
bridge more  willingly  than  the  words 
and  spirit  of  the  kind,  great  man  who 
treated  them  as  his  equals.  A  story  told 
in  public  by  our  present  ambassador  to 
Great  Britain  gives  evidence  that  no 
shadow  of  superiority  to  the  undergrad- 
uates was  assumed  even  at  the  times 
when  they  must  have  been  vividly  aware 
of  its  existence.  According  to  the  anec- 
dote, whether  true  or  well  found,  Mr. 
Brooks  unwittingly  walked  in  one  morn- 
ing upon  a  company  of  young  fellows 
huddling  over  a  dying  fire,  and  miser- 


80  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

ably  recovering  from  a  niglit  of  dissipa- 
tion. He  gave  them,  a  friendly  greeting, 
and  sat  down  for  a  few  minutes'  talk,  in 
which  no  word  of  censure  or  rebuke 
found  a  place.  Then  he  rose  to  go,  and, 
putting  his  hand  kindly  on  the  head  of 
the  young  man  whom  he  knew  as  the 
leading  spirit,  said,  ^^Well,  boys,  it 
doesn't  make  you  feel  any  better,  does 
it?  "  No  sermon  that  he  ever  preached 
could  have  been  better  adapted  to  its 
end  than  these  words.  The  remem- 
brance of  all  his  words  so  stirred  the 
hearts  of  the  men  of  Harvard  that  im- 
mediately upon  his  death  measures  were 
taken  for  the  building  of  the  commodi- 
ous ''Phillips  Brooks  House,"  now  just 
completed,  and  meant  to  stand  for  all 
time  within  the  college  yard  as  a  memo- 
rial of  the  preacher  and  the  centre  of 
all  religious  work  for  and  by  the  students 
of  the  university. 

The  desire  of  Mr.  Brooks  to  reach  the 
men  of  his  time  revealed  itself  in  many 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  81 

utterances  outside  of  his  own  parish  and 
the  Harvard  community.  Historical, 
civic,  and  literary  occasions  of  many  sorts 
called  upon  him  as  a  sx)eaker,  and  always 
he  made  himself  felt  primarily  as  a  man 
among  men.  ^N'owhere  could  this  im- 
pression of  him  have  been  more  clear 
than  at  the  monthly  meetings  of  the 
Loyal  Legion,  which  he  attended  regu- 
larly for  many  years.  ^  ^  To  see  him  and 
all  the  officers  standing  and  repeating 
the  Lord's  Prayer  together  was  worth 
a  month  of  trouble."  So  wrote  one  of 
the  bravest  of  Massachusetts  soldiers,  and 
the  picture  of  the  man  of  peace  praying 
with  the  men  of  warfare  to  whom  his 
whole  heart  had  gone  out  through  the 
death- dealing  years  they  had  survived 
is  one  of  the  images  which  the  younger 
generation  will  do  best  to  preserve  in  all 
its  clearness  of  outline  and  suggestion. 


VII. 

^^I  HATE  had  no  wife,  no  children, 
no  particular  honors,  no  serious  misfort- 
unes, and  no  adventures  worth  speaking 
of.  It  is  shameful  at  such  times  as  these 
not  to  have  a  history  ;  but  I  have  not  got 
one,  and  must  come  without."  This  is 
the  response  which  Phillips  Brooks 
made  to  a  request,  late  in  his  life, 
for  personal  details  to  be  printed  in  a 
record  of  his  college  class.  Happy  is 
the  country  without  a  history  j  and,  if 
men  are  like  the  lands  they  live  in,  there 
must  be  a  great  deal  of  happiness  in  the 
lives  of  clergymen  who  remain  long  in 
one  parish.  Certainly,  they  do  not  teem 
with  incidents  of  historical  value  ;  and, 
certainly,  the  life  of  Phillips  Brooks 
from  1877 — let  us  say — to  1891  was 
free  from  conspicuous  events. 

Every  one  who  has  returned  from 
travels  abroad,  and  received  greetings  no 
more  enthusiastic  than  if  lie  had  been 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  83 

visiting  a  neighboring  city,  knows  how 
much  less  important  such  journeys  are 
in  the  eyes  of  the  public  than  in  his  own. 
The  events  which  broke  the  same- 
ness of  the  clerical  life  of  Mr.  Brooks 
were  largely  those  of  foreign  travel ;  and, 
since  he  was  an  extensive  and  accom- 
plished traveller,  he  regarded  his  jour- 
neyings  as  matters  of  course,  and  did 
not  expect  his  friends  to  take  them  more 
seriously  than  he  did.  For  him  they 
were  always  mere  holidays,  and  his  let- 
ters home  never  lost  a  boyish  freshness 
and  light-hearted  appreciation  of  all  the 
humors  of  the  way.  He  could  look  with 
amusement  upon  the  shortness  of  the  beds 
and  the  surplices  in  which  he  was  asked 
to  sleep  and  to  preach  ;  and,  when  he  re- 
turned from  a  journey  with  two  friends 
of  physical  proportions  like  his  own,  he 
could  doubtless  laugh  at  the  good  stories 
of  their  Brobdingnagian  adventures  just 
as  heartily  as  if  the  stories  had  been 
true.     From  India  he  could  write  of  his 


84  PHILLIPS   BKOOKS 

visit  to  the  place  where  Gautama  sat  six 
years  under  a  tree,  evolving  Buddhism, 
as  a  pilgrimage  which  a  Boston  minister, 
in  days  when  a  large  part  of  Boston 
would  rather  think  itself  Buddhist  than 
Christian,  was  in  duty  bound  to  make. 

From  Paris  he  wrote  in  1880  to  his 
brother  William,  '  ^  I  have  to  be  in  Lon- 
don, or  rather  at  Windsor,  next  Sunday, 
to  make  a  few  remarks  to  the  Queen.  ^' 
In  this  democratic  fashion  he  announced 
his  invitation  or  summons  to  preach  be- 
fore Her  Majesty.  The  sermons  which 
he  preached  in  ^yestminster  and  other 
pulpits  three  years  later  were  the  amaze- 
ment and  delight  of  English  congrega- 
tions. Mr.  Macmillan  asked  that  they 
might  be  made  into  a  book,  which  was 
promptly  published  under  the  title  /S^er- 
mons  xyredclied  in  English  Churclies.  Dean 
Farrar  has  told  of  the  exclamation  of  an 
American  woman  in  London  :  ^^  I  am  so 
glad  he  preached  that  sermon  at  St.  Mar- 
garet's.    It  is  a  special  favorite  of  ours 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  85 

at  Boston. ' '  And,  indeed,  the  title  of  the 
volume  was  not  Sermons  written  for  Eng- 
lish Churches.  There  as  here,  however, 
the  man  won  men  to  himself  in  private 
life,  even  as  his  sermons  won  hearts  to 
the  truths  he  proclaimed  in  public.  Many 
of  his  foreign  letters  give  us  delightful 
glimpses  of  domestic  scenes  into  which 
the  traveller  was  welcomed.  Of  all  his 
English  friends.  Dean  Stanley,  whose 
bust  is  the  only  memorial  of  its  sort  in 
Trinity  Church,  Boston,  was  probably 
held  first  in  the  esteem  and  love  of 
Phillips  Brooks.  But  the  names  of 
other  Churchmen  hardly  less  famous, 
besides  those  of  Tennyson,  Browning, 
Arnold,  and  of  many  men  whose  lives 
are  a  part  of  the  best  record  of  the  Yic- 
torian  era,  appear  and  reappear  in  the 
annals  of  his  journeys.  Sprung  from 
the  best  blood  of  his  own  land  and  city, 
Phillips  Brooks  retained,  behind  all  his 
sense  of  the  common  dignity  of  man- 
kind, a  keen  appreciation  of  whatever 


86  PHILLIPS  BEOOKS 

possessed  distinction.  To  this,  in  men, 
as  in  sculpture,  architecture,  painting, 
and  to  a  far  smaller  degree  in  music, 
he  paid  the  full  due  of  recognition  and 
of  reverence.  Yet  from  the  embodi- 
ments of  distinction  with  which  the  best 
of  English  society  made  him  familiar, 
he  could  turn  at  the  end  of  every  holi- 
day with  the  zest  of  a  boy  to  the  thought 
of  home ;  and  it  is  not  extravagant  to 
suppose  that  the  week  of  the  westward 
ocean  voyage  was  to  him  often  the  best 
week  of  the  summer  or  the  year  away 
from  Boston. 

The  friendships  to  which  Phillips 
Brooks  returned  in  America  bound  him 
close  to  men  still  living  in  Boston  and 
elsewhere.  It  is  especially  for  them  to 
speak  of  the  part  he  bore  in  their  inti- 
mate relationships.  One  point  which 
any  one  may  observe  is  that  some  of  the 
best  friends  of  liis  college  and  seminary 
days  held  their  place  among  the  best 
friends  of  his  final  years.     If  they  were 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  87 

for  the  most  part  clergymen,  it  is  no  more 
remarkable  than  that  lawyers  and  phy- 
sicians should  select  most  of  their  friends 
from  their  professional  associates.  The 
one  group  of  men  to  whom  Phillips 
Brooks  probably  stood  nearest  as  a 
friend  was  the  ^'Clericus  Club,"  estab- 
lished by  him  in  1870,  meeting  first  in 
his  study  at  the  Hotel  Kempton,  after- 
ward in  his  house  in  Marlborough  Street, 
and  still  later  at  the  Trinity  Church 
Eectory  on  Clarendon  Street.  From  its 
foundation  till  1891  Mr.  Brooks  was  its 
president,  and  as  a  rule  its  monthly 
host.  Its  total  membership,  represent- 
ing in  general  the  more  liberal  thought 
of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  New  Eng- 
land, had  at  the  time  of  Bishop  Brooks's 
death  reached  approximately  the  number 
of  sixty.  At  no  one  time  was  it  nearly 
so  large,  and  the  intimate  intercourse 
which  was  possible  for  its  members  made 
it  also  possible  for  them  to  carry  out  into 
their  parishes  and  lives  something  more 


88  PHILLIPS  BROOKS 

vital  than  the  memory  of  the  papers 
which  they  read  and  freely  discussed. 
The  spirit  of  the  man  who  was  at  once 
their  leader  and  their  friend  must  in 
some  measure  have  communicated  itself 
through  them  to  many  circles  of  human- 
ity. There  is,  on  the  other  hand,  abun- 
dant reason  to  believe  that  Phillips 
Brooks  i)laced  a  high  value  upon  every- 
thing which  the  club  and  its  associations 
brought  to  him. 

Perhaps  because  his  own  life  was  that 
of  a  bachelor,  he  cared  all  the  more  for 
his  friendships  and  that  contact  with 
domestic  affairs  which,  after  the  death  of 
his  parents,  he  retained  through  the 
households  of  his  brothers.  The  Letters 
of  Travel  reveal,  to  a  marked  degree, 
the  true  joy  fulness  of  his  relationships 
with  parents,  brothers,  and  nieces.  He 
was  constantly  writing  to  liis  nearest 
kinsmen,  not  because  it  was  his  duty, 
but  evidently  because  he  loved  to  do  it, 
and  knew  with  what  love  his  stej)s  were 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  89 

followed  everywhere.  Wlieii  lie  was  at 
home,  all  the  domestic  festivals  found 
him  ready  to  do  them  honor.  After  his 
parents  moved  from  Boston  to  !N'orth 
Andover,  the  Thanksgiving  dinner  of 
the  family  took  place  year  by  year  with 
great  circumstance  at  the  E^ctory.  Here 
also  the  nieces  at  any  time  could  find  in 
a  closet  the  dolls  kept  for  their  private 
entertainment.  Mr.  Brooks's  own  birth- 
day was  regularly  celebrated  at  the 
house  of  his  brother  in  Boston.  The 
children  dressed  his  chair  with  flags  and 
ribbons.  Until  the  years  crowded  the 
candles  too  close,  there  was  always  a 
cake ;  and,  to  speed  the  bringing  in  of 
the  gifts,  the  dinner  was  sometimes  hur- 
ried out  of  aU  keeping  with  its  proper 
dignity.  But  the  greatest  excitement 
over  gifts  was  of  course  at  Christmas 
time.  Then  the  younger  members  of 
the  family  were  summoned  separately  to 
breakfast  at  the  rectory,  and  after  care- 
ful   deliberation    there    were    morning 


90  PHILLIPS  BEOOKS 

visits  to  the  shops.  The  importance  of 
secrecy  in  the  Christmas  of  childhood 
was  never  lost  to  sight.  ^  ^  Very  private  ! ' ' 
was  the  heading  of  a  letter  written  from 
Vienna  in  November  of  1882  to  one  of 
the  nieces  in  Boston.  ^^  This  letter  is  an 
awful  secret  between  you  and  me/'  it 
began.  ^  ^  If  you  tell  anybody  about  it, 
I  will  not  speak  to  you  all  this  winter. 
And  this  is  what  it  is  about.  You  know 
Christmas  is  coming  ;  and  I  am  afraid 
that  I  shall  not  get  home  by  that  time, 
and  so  I  want  you  to  get  the  Christmas 
presents  for  the  children.''  Here  fol- 
low injunctions  to  find  out  ^4n  the  most 
secret  way"  what  they  would  like  best. 
^^Then  you  must  ask  yourself  what  you 
want,  but  without  letting  yourself  know 
about  it,  and  get  it,  too,  and  put  it  in 
your  own  stocking,  and  be  very  much 
surprised  when  you  find  it  there." 

The  uncle  of  the  summer-time  was, 
however,  perhaps  even  more  delight- 
ful than  this  Christmas  correspondent. 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  91 

After  the  death  of  the  last  of  the  previ- 
ous generation  the  ancestral  place  at 
North  Andover  came  into  the  possession 
of  Phillips  Brooks.  Here,  within  reach 
of  his  parish  duties,  he  spent  most  of  the 
summers  not  devoted  to  travel.  The 
children  of  the  family  could  ill  have 
been  spared  from  the  North  Andover  life. 
"Without  them  the  fireworks  on  the 
Fourth  of  July  might  have  been  tame, 
but  with  them  were  a  source  of  boyish 
delight  to  their  uncle.  To  the  children's 
society  the  afternoons  were  given  almost 
as  devotedly  as  the  mornings  were  kept 
for  work.  The  '^  Corn-barn"  was  fitted 
up  as  their  playhouse.  Trophies  of 
travel  were  its  decorations;  and  one  of 
its  chief  pieces  of  furniture  was  a  great 
arm-chair,  from  which  Mr.  Brooks  used 
to  watch  the  children  at  work  over 
the  cooking-stove  he  had  given  them. 
When  there  were  plays  in  prepara- 
tion, he  helped  with  his  own  hands 
to  build  the  stage.     Generally,  in  the 


92  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

afternoon  he  took  a  long  drive  in  a 
buggy  which  had  a  place  for  just  one 
child.  But  there  were  shops  in  the 
little  towns  through  which  the  drive  was 
sure  to  lead,  and  there  was  always  time 
to  stop  and  buy  some  toy  for  those 
who  had  been  left  behind.  In  the  even- 
ing perhaps  there  were  games,  into 
which  Mr.  Brooks  entered  with  all 
heartiness.  Thus  ended  many  a  quiet 
day  J  and  upon  the  simple  picture  which 
their  succession  presents  one  may  look 
with  a  sense  of  the  truest  satisfa<jtion. 

The  children  of  Mr.  Brooks's  own 
family  received  in  fuller  measure  what 
he  gave  to  all  children  with  whom  he 
came  into  contact.  In  his  parish,  and 
later  in  his  diocese,  he  invariably  made 
himself  the  friend  of  the  youngest 
generation,  and  seemed  to  get,  for  ex- 
ample from  a  Christmas  festival,  quite  as 
much  pleasure  as  his  presence  and  words 
were  sure  to  give.  With  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  children  of  the  century,  the 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  93 

deaf,  dumb,  and  blind  Helen  Keller, 
his  relations  were  strikingly  beautiful. 
^^  Please  tell  me  something  that  you 
know  about  God, ' '  she  wrote  to  him ; 
and  the  substance  of  the  long  reply, 
fitted  precisely  to  the  nature  and 
understanding  of  the  child,  is  to  be 
found  near  the  end  of  his  letter  :  ' '  And 
so  love  is  everything ;  and  if  anybody 
asks  you,  or  if  you  ask  yourself,  what 
God  is,  answer,  ^God  is  love.'''  In 
addition  to  the  letter- writing  there  was 
an  Intimate  personal  intercourse,  which 
caused  the  child  soon  after  the  bishop's 
death  to  write,  ^  ^  Oh,  it  is  very  hard  to 
bear  this  great  sorrow,  —  hard  to  believe 
that  I  shall  never  more  hold  his  gentle 
hand  while  he  tells  me  about  God  and 
love  and  goodness."  But  the  memory 
of  his  words  came  back  to  her  :  '  ^  And  in 
the  midst  of  my  sorrow  I  seem  to  hear 
his  glad  voice  say  :  ^  Helen,  you  shall  see 
me  again  in  that  beautiful  world  we 
used  to  talk  about  in  my  study.     Let 


94  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

not  your  heart  be  troubled.'  Then 
heaven  seems  very  near,  since  a  tender, 
loving  friend  awaits  us  there. '^ 


VIIT. 

Had  the  i^rivate  and  parochial  affairs 
of  Phillips  Brooks  been  allowed  to  run 
their  course  till  the  end  of  his  life,  that 
end  might  have  come  less  quickly.  He 
would,  moreover,  have  been  spared  the 
publicity  into  which  his  motives  and 
everything  that  concerned  his  inmost 
life  were  dragged  by  the  conspicuous 
events  of  the  few  closing  years.  '  ^  When 
I  think  how  much  of  other  people's 
thoughts  I  have  dared  to  occupy  for  the 
last  three  months,^'  he  wrote  to  a  friend 
in  the  summer  of  1891,  ^^I  am  truly 
ashamed  of  myself ;  but  it  has  not  been 
my  fault.  And  now  it  is  over;  and  I 
shall  go  into  the  upper  house,  and  be 
forgotten. '^  As  early  as  1886  he  might 
have  gone  into  the  House  of  Bishops, 
for  then  he  was  elected  Assistant  Bishop 
of  Pennsylvania.  From  the  fact  that  he 
declined  the  of&ce,  it  was  felt  that  he 
preferred  never   to    become    a   bishop. 


96  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

Indeed,  with  his  marvellous  power  as  a 
preacher, —  a  power  to  which  the  busi- 
ness men  of  Xew  York  paid  their  trib- 
ute when  they  thronged  from  Wall 
Street  to  the  noonday  services  at  Trin- 
ity in  the  Lent  of  1890, — he  might  well 
have  been  content  to  end  his  clerical 
life  as  he  began  it. 

This,  however,  was  simply  not  per- 
mitted to  him.  When  the  diocesan  con- 
vention of  Massachusetts  met  in  April  of 
1891  to  elect  a  successor  to  Bishop  Pad- 
dock, the  delegates  found  themselves  in 
an  unusual  i^osition.  One  of  the  candi- 
dates had  already  received  the  suffrages  of 
the  unsectarian  public.  The  newspapers 
and  general  opinion  had  said  that,  if  the 
diocese  of  Massachusetts  should  fail  to 
make  Phillips  Brooks  its  bishop,  it  would 
fall  irreparably  short  of  a  great  opi>ortu- 
nity.  There  were  not  wanting  those 
within  tlie  church  who  thought  that  the 
election  of  a  man  holding  the  theological 
views  of  ]\Ir.  Brooks,  and  exhibiting  his 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  97 

sympathy  with  men  still  more  widely  at 
variance  with  the  stricter  sect  of  Church- 
men, would  be  an  ecclesiastical  calamity. 
"When  the  vote  was  cast,  the  laity  were 
found  to  be  overwhelmingly  in  his  favor, 
and  the  clergy  so  far  in  agreement  with 
them  as  to  leave  no  doubt  that  the  dio- 
cese had  chosen  the  leader  it  really 
wanted. 

Up  to  this  time  the  churchmanship  of 
Phillix^s  Brooks  had  been  a  matter  which 
concerned  only  his  voluntary  hearers  and 
his  bishop.  So  long  as  there  was  no 
interference  from  these  quarters,  his 
preaching  could  go  on  unquestioned.  But 
it  is  the  law  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  that  a  majority  of  the  bishops 
and  standing  committees  of  every  diocese 
shall  give  their  consent — their  placebit — 
to  the  consecration  of  every  bishop-elect. 
He  is  usually  so  '  ^  safe ' '  a  man  that  no 
serious  question  is  raised.  It  is  only  in 
the  case  of  extremists  that  there  is  any 
doubt  of  confirmation.      When   Father 


98  PHILLIPS   BEOOKS 

Grafton  was  elected  bishop  of  Fond  du 
Lac,  the  standing  committee  of  Massa- 
chusetts sent  out  a  circular  declaring  that 
he  was  not  too  extreme  a  man  for  the 
episcopate.  Phillips  Brooks  himself,  rep- 
resenting absolutely  different  views  from 
Father  Grafton,  wrote  a  letter  to  the 
president  of  the  standing  committee  of 
Kentucky,  saying,  '^If  we  reject  extreme 
men  from  the  episcopate,  we  shall  make 
the  episcopate  narrower  than  it  is.^^  It 
would  have  been  too  much  to  expect 
that  all  those  who  differed  from  Phillips 
Brooks  would  look  upon  his  candidacy 
with  correspondingly  open  minds.  Yet 
there  might  easily  have  been  a  nearer 
approach  to  the  manner  in  which  he  and 
Massachusetts  dealt  with  the  question  of 
Fond  du  Lac. 

The  objections  of  those  who  were  most 
active  in  opposing  the  confirmation  of 
the  choice  of  Massachusetts  were  un- 
doubtedly sincere.  The  pamphlet  in 
which  the  bishop  of  a  AVestern  diocese 


PHILLIPS  BEOOKS  99 

brought  together  his  ^^Open  Letter '' 
and  many  other  expressions  of  opposi- 
tion speaks  for  the  positive  convictions 
of  one  who  believed  with  all  his  heart 
that  the  Church  to  which  his  life  was 
devoted  would  really  be  hurt  by  accept- 
ing a  bishop  who  had  been  baptized  as 
an  infant  by  a  Unitarian,  had  joined  in 
public  services  with  ministers  of  differ- 
ent creeds,  had  even  invited  them  to 
partake  of  the  communion  when  Trinity 
Church  was  consecrated,  and  was  him- 
self ^'an  Arian  of  some  sort."  It  was 
even  an  offence  that  a  Unitarian  minis- 
ter had  written  a  sonnet  of  satisfaction 
on  his  election.  If  the  "Western  bishop 
knew  that  students  for  the  Methodist 
ministry  were  sent  by  their  instructors 
to  hear  the  preaching  of  Phillips 
Brooks,  at  least  he  did  not  mention  it. 
Xor  could  it  have  been  known  that 
Mr.  Brooks  had  written  to  a  lady 
in  some  uncertainity  about  coming  to 
confirmation,    ^  ^  I  am   content  that    our 


100  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

Churcli  should  be  a  helpful  friend  to 
one  who  has  been  living  among  quite 
different  associations,  and  who  does  not 
think  it  best  to  come  into  closer  personal 
connection  with  her."  Still  less  could 
it  have  been  foreseen  that  within  two 
years  a  Congregational  minister  in 
AYorcester  would  say  from  his  i)ulpit : 
^^  Entirely  and  deeply  loyal  as  he  was  to 
his  own  branch  of  the  Church,  it  was 
simply  impossible  for  us  to  identify  him 
wholly  with  it,  because  the  Christ  that 
was  so  signally  manifested  in  him  was 
our  Christ  and  the  Christ  of  all  believ- 
ers ;  and  therefore  this  man,  transcend- 
ing all  sectarian  limits,  was  the  brother 
and  bishop  of  us  all."  That  any  man 
should  become  the  bishop  of  all,  with- 
out bringing  all  into  one  mode  of 
thought,  w^as  indeed  a  ground  for  fear  to 
the  Western  guardian  of  the  faith.  He 
called  upon  Mr.  Brooks  to  define  his 
position  on  several  theological  points, 
and  received  this  reply:   ^^I  have  been 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  101 

for  thirty-two  years  a  minister  of  the 
Church,  and  I  have  used  her  services 
joyfully  and  without  complaint.  I  have 
preached  in  many  places,  and  with  the 
utmost  freedom.  I  have  ^Titten  and 
published  many  volumes,  which  I  have 
no  right  to  ask  anybody  to  read,  but 
which  will  give  to  any  one  who  chooses 
to  read  them  clear  understanding  of  my 
way  of  thinking.  My  acts  have  never 
been  concealed. 

^^  Under  these  circumstances,  I  cannot 
think  it  well  to  make  any  utterance  of 
faith  or  pledge  of  purpose  at  the  present 
time. ' ' 

Here  was  one  who  loved  the  Church  of 
his  boyhood  and  manhood  as  loyally  as 
the  most  intense  of  his  opponents,  one 
who  believed  that  it  was  abundantly 
spacious  for  them  and  for  him.  It  could 
have  been  no  easy  thing  for  such  a  man 
to  bear  in  silence  the  bitterest  charges 
of  disloyalty,  and  to  hear  it  proclaimed 
that  the  place  in  which  he  found  himself 


102  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

was  not  a  place  where  he  could  honestly 
remain.  Yet,  through  all  the  weeks 
when  his  name  in  certain  regions  was 
little  better  than  a  target  for  abuse,  no 
word  of  retort  or  justification  passed  his 
lips.  When  he  found  a  savage  picture 
of  his  face  in  a  newspaper,  he  could 
even  make  light  of  it  by  writing  to 
Bishop  Clark, — 

^^Ko  wonder,  if  'tis  thus  he  looks, 
The  Church  has    doubts   of   Phillips 
Brooks,"  — 

with  other  lines  to  the  effect  that  at 
least  he  meant  to  do  his  best.  For 
charges  of  one  sort  he  was  indeed  alert. 
^^  After  all,"  he  said,  'Hhey  have  let 
me  off  i)retty  easily.  As  yet  I  have 
never  been  charged  with  breaking  either 
the  sixth  or  the  seventh  or  the  eighth 
commandment."  At  another  time  he 
told  a  friend  that  he  cared  nothing  about 
what  might  be  said  of  his  opinions  and 
position  in  the  Church  j  ^^but,"  he  con- 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  103 

tinned,  '  ^  if  yon  hear  a  word  against  my 
moral  character,  I  mnst  know  it, — that 
must  be  met.^'  Carefnlly  as  he  and  his 
friends  might  listen  for  accusations  such 
as  these,  they  conld  hear  absolutely 
nothing.  That  which  did  make  itself 
heard,  in  spite  of  all  endeavors  of  the 
extremists  in  opposition,  was  the  positive 
confirmation  which  the  bishops  and  the 
dioceses  set  upon  the  choice  of  Massa- 
chusetts. 

On  the  14th  of  October,  1891,  in  Trin- 
ity Church,  Boston,  PhUlips  Brooks  was 
consecrated  to  the  episcopate  by  the  lay- 
ing on  of  hands  by  nine  bishops  of  the 
Church.  If  there  had  ever  been  any 
real  doubt  of  his  loyalty  to  the  system 
for  which  they  and  the  ceremony  stood, 
it  would  have  been  dispelled  by  his 
standing  as  the  central  towering  figure 
of  the  solemn  rites.  His  face,  to  those 
who  watched  it  as  the  procession  of 
priests  and  bishops  made  its  way  from 
the  chancel  to  the  doors  which  opened 


104  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

to  the  world,  expressed  something  more 
of  inward  than  of  outward  consecration. 
Yet  the  symbol  and  the  reality  were  as 
one,  and  the  full  significance  of  his  work 
as  a  bishop  was  to  be  that  every  formal 
act  could  show  itself  glowing  with  a 
light  of  the  spirit  that  shone  within. 

There  were  many  ways  in  which  the 
first  Sunday  after  his  consecration  might 
have  been  spent,  but  the  way  he  chose 
was  probably  the  best  of  all.  An  old 
friend  in  the  ministry  was  in  deep  sor- 
row for  the  loss  of  his  wife.  To  this 
friend  Bishop  Brooks  devoted  the  Sun- 
day, preaching  for  him,  and  bringing 
him  courage  and  comfort  through  the 
words  spoken  both  in  public  and  in 
private.  As  he  went  about  the  diocese 
in  the  weeks  and  months  that  followed, 
it  was  not  to  personal  grieis  that  he  was 
called  upon  especially  to  minister.  Yet 
into  all  his  relations  with  his  clergy  and 
their  people  he  infused  a  strong  personal 
quality,  which   left   behind   him   every- 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  105 

where  a  sense  that  the  effective  bishop 
and  the  affectionate  friend  were  strangely 
blended  into  one.  In  the  capacity  of 
Mend,  he  could  say  to  the  choir-boys  at 
Newton,  in  the  last  public  address  of  his 
life,  ^  ^  When  you  meet  me,  let  me  know 
that  you  know  me."  As  a  bishop  on 
the  other  hand,  he  won  the  reputation 
of  ^^a  stickler  for  the  canons."  Yet 
one  does  not  need  to  look  far  and  long 
to  see  him  again  in  the  less  formal  light, 
this  time,  at  the  first  and  only  meeting 
of  the  House  of  Bishops  he  attended, 
leaning  over  to  the  seminary  classmate 
who  long  before  had  befriended  him, 
and  whispering,  ^  ^  Henry,  is  it  always  as 
dull  as  this  ?  ' '  The  great  seriousness  of 
his  of&ce,  however,  was  always  behind 
any  humorous  lack  of  seriousness  with 
which  he  could  take  himself  for  the 
moment.  Just  as  in  his  parish  ministry 
he  had  ^  ^  loved  to  preach, "  so  in  all  the 
labors  of  his  new  oflSce  he  experienced 
a  hearty  delight.      ^^I  like   this  going 


106  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

round  from  place  to  place,  and  preach- 
ing to  all  these  new  people,'^  he  once 
said  to  Bishop  Clark.  ^'I  wish  that  I 
could  have  begun  this  sort  of  life  ten 
years  earlier." 

It  was  not  a  part  of  his  nature  to 
spare  himself  any  fraction  of  the  work 
which  came  to  him.  Letters  were  an- 
swered with  the  scrupulousness  of  old, 
and  demands  of  every  sort  upon  his  time 
were  met  without  a  question.  When 
his  secretary  attempted  to  condole  with 
him  on  having  so  little  time  to  him- 
self, he  declared  that  he  had  plenty 
of  it  —  in  the  railroad  cars.  The  total 
power  of  good  that  might  have  been 
wrought  by  a  continuance  of  his  travels 
over  the  length  and  breadth  of  his  native 
State,  bringing  into  every  town  and  city 
the  influence  of  his  words  and  i^resence, 
can  hardly  be  overestimated.  Bat  the 
labors  to  which  he  subjected  himself  were 
more  than  a  man,  no  longer  young  and 
never  content  to  live  with  anything  less 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  107 

than  the  fullest  exercise  of  his  powers, 
could  be  expected  to  bear.  His  zest  of 
living  was  expressed  one  day  when  he 
exclaimed  to  his  successor,  ''I  don't 
want  to  be  old,  but  I  should  like  to  live 
on  this  earth  five  hundred  years.''  The 
horror  of  his  life,  he  is  said  to  have  told 
another  friend,  was  that  he  might  lose 
his  voice  in  old  age  and  be  unable  to 
preach  ;  but  then,  he  said,  he  would  ask 
his  friends,  a  few  at  a  time,  to  come  to 
his  study,  and  let  him  whisper  his  mes- 
sage to  them.  The  look  of  age,  creeping 
gradually  through  recent  years  into  his 
face,  had  begun  to  remind  men  that  his 
strength,  like  theii  s,  had  its  bounds.  But 
for  him  the  death  by  slow  degrees  would 
have  been  a  horror  indeed,  and  the  spec- 
tacle of  it  a  sadness  to  men.  Happily 
this  was  not  to  be.  A  sharp  and  sudden 
illness  seized  him  when  he  had  been  but 
fifteen  months  a  bishop  ;  and  on  January 
23,  1893,  he  died. 

It  is  something  to  live  in  the  age  of 


108  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

photography.  But  for  this  art  the  extent 
to  which  Copley  Square  outside  of  Trin- 
ity Church  was  thronged  on  the  day  when 
Bishop  Brooks  was  buried  might  be  for- 
gotten. The  pictures  remain  to  teU 
us  that  on  the  26th  of  January  the 
great  chui'ch  could  hold  but  a  small  por- 
tion of  the  multitude  which  came  to 
render  him  the  last  act  of  reverence. 
The  municipal  offices  and  many  places  of 
business  were  closed.  A  sense  of  public 
grief,  an  accumulated  personal  bereave- 
ment, was  clearly  to  be  felt  throughout 
the  city.  Men  and  women  of  every  sect 
and  of  none  truly  mourned  the  loss  of  the 
man  whose  greatness  had  belonged  to  Bos- 
ton and  to  America.  ^'  If  you  are  look- 
ing for  Christian  unity,  ^ '  one  of  its  chief 
advocates  was  told  that  morning,  ^'you 
will  see  more  of  it  to-day  than  you  ever 
have  seen  before  or  are  likely  soon  to  see 
again. ' '  One  wished  that  Bishop  Brooks 
himself  could  have  known  what  his  death 
would  mean  to  the  whole  city  of  his  birth 


PHILLIPS   BEOOKS  109 

and  love,  and  even  more  particularly 
tx)  Harvard  Ck)llege.  Eight  young  men 
from  the  University,  seven  of  them  under- 
graduates, served  as  his  pall- bearers.  As 
the  funeral  procession  moved  from  Trinity 
Church  to  Mount  Auburn,  it  passed,  at  the 
request  of  the  undergraduates,  through 
the  college  yard,  by  Gore  Hall  and  Uni- 
versity out  through  the  gate  between 
Harvard  and  Massachusetts.  The  college 
bell  tolled  slowly.  The  undergraduates 
crowded  the  steps  of  the  buildings  and 
with  uncovered  heads  stood  thickly 
massed  on  either  side  of  the  driveway 
until  the  whole  procession  had  passed 
them  by.  It  was  a  farewell  of  which  the 
highest  exemplar  of  manhood  in  any 
form,  physical,  intellectual,  or  spiritual, 
might  have  been  thought  worthy.  That 
a  great  body  of  collegians,  the  keenest  of 
men  to  know  a  man  when  they  see  him, 
should  stand  bareheaded  on  a  winter  day, 
and  pay  this  farewell  homage  to  Phillips 
Brooks,    speaks    more    truly   than    any 


110  PHILLIPS  BEOOKS 

words  of  description  coiild  speak  for  the 
essential  quality  of  manhood  that  was  in 
hinL 


IX. 

There  is  no  art  to  do  for  personalities 
what  photography  can  do  for  scenes  and 
faces.  The  achievements  of  a  man,  the 
effect  of  his  personality  and  its  mediums 
of  expression,  can  be  described  in  words. 
But  the  personality  itself  is  a  thing  which 
eludes  reproduction  in  the  terms  of  hu- 
man speech.  With  Phillips  Brooks  this 
indefinable  gift  of  personality  was  the 
dominating  element  of  power.  Surely, 
it  was  not  his  mind  by  itself  which  placed 
him  head  and  shoulders  above  most  of 
his  contemporaries.  In  the  mere  gift  of 
intellect  some  of  them  surpassed  him. 
It  has  frequently  been  said  that,  if  he  had 
devoted  himself  to  literature,  his  gifts  of 
insight  and  of  self-expression  would  have 
wrought  wonderful  results.  Perhaps 
they  would ;  for,  certainly,  men  of  no 
greater  mental  equipment  have  made 
enviable  names  for  themselves  in  letters. 
But   all    these    speculations  are    futile. 


112  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

He  chose  the  work  of  preaching  for  the 
expression  of  his  personality,  and  it 
remains  for  us  only  to  fix  our  final  regard 
upon  its  individual  methods  and  effect. 

Let  us  say  at  once,  then,  that  the  gifts 
of  circumstance,  physique,  and  tempera- 
ment played  an  important  part  in  mak- 
ing him  what  he  was.  Whether  through 
his  own  merits  or  not,  he  was  shielded 
from  the  petty  concerns  and  cares  which 
hamper  the  majority  of  mankind.  To 
illustrate  his  physical  indifference  to  the 
ills  of  the  body,  it  is  told  that  he  once 
held  up  his  thumb,  bearing  the  scar  of  a 
surgeon's  knife  and  said  :  ^^Men  tell  me 
that  was  about  the  severest  pain  which  a 
man  can  have.  If  that  is  so,  then  I  have 
less  respect  for  pain  than  I  thought  I 
had. '  ^  Joined  with  this  physical  superi- 
ority was  the  corresponding  temperament 
of  the  optimist.  The  union  of  these  quali- 
ties in  many  persons  would  have  served 
to  repel  the  natures  more  sensitive  to  the 
unequal  things  of  life.     But  in  public 


PHILLIPS   BKOOKS  113 

and  in  private  utterances  a  third  quality 
of  sympathy  was  blended  with  these 
other  two  in  such  a  manner  as  to  make 
them  far  less  a  means  of  suggesting  the 
unattainable  than  of  communicating 
strength.  ^  ^  To  look  up  into  his  honest 
clear  eyes, ' '  wrote  Lucy  Larcom,  when 
she  was  first  making  his  acquaintance, 
'^was  like  seeing  the  steady  lights  in  a 
watch-tower. ' '  This,  then,  was  a  physi- 
cal presence  which  of  itself  expressed 
what  men  and  women  needed  to  know. 

The  spiritual  gifts,  to  which  his  intel- 
lect brought  many  and  important  aids, 
gave  him  his  true  distinction.  In  an 
age  commonly  called  the  most  material 
he  rose  up  and  presented  a  living  proof 
of  his  belief  that  all  men  could  be 
touched  and  stirred  by  the  utterance  of 
genuine  spiritual  truth.  Dr.  Holmes 
described  him  as  ^  ^  the  ideal  minister  of 
the  American  gospel."  And  so  he  was, 
the  interpreter  of  the  unseen,  spiritual 
things  so  hidden  behind  the  temporal  and 


114  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

seen  that  it  is  all  too  easy  for  a  people 
like  ours  to  forget  their  existence.  To 
readjust  a  favorite  figure  of  his  own, 
Bishop  Brooks  was  a  window  of  clear 
glass,  through  which  the  light  which 
was  to  him  the  light  of  life  shone  down, 
with  the  least  possible  loss  of  clearness 
through  transmission,  into  the  lives  of 
men.  Before  them  he  set  up  the  high- 
est and  noblest  standards  of  living ;  and 
into  the  theological  atmosphere  of  his 
time,  within  and  outside  of  his  own 
branch  of  the  universal  Church,  he  in- 
troduced, for  laity  as  for  clergy,  a 
clearing  influence,  of  which  the  effec- 
tiveness cannot  possibly  be  restricted  to 
the  period  of  one  man's  life. 

Like  the  actor  and  the  orator,  unlike 
the  poet  and  the  painter,  the  preacher 
must  yield  up  the  fullest  power  of  his 
work  when  his  voice  is  silencM  and  his 
personality  removed.  But  the  preaeher 
who  is  also  a  teacher  of  positive  truth 
cannot  wholly  perish.     He  passes  on  to 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  115 

others  something  of  the  spirit  that  was 
in  him.  The  chief  torch,  is  extinguished, 
and  it  seems  at  first  as  if  little  or  no 
light  would  be  left.  But  soon  our  eyes 
begin  to  see  the  rushlights  and  the 
candles  which  have  lit  themselves  at 
the  torch  ;  and,  though  no  one  of  them 
is  so  bright  as  this  was,  yet  their  total 
light  makes  the  gray  world  a  far  more 
tolerable  place.  Moreover,  many  lights 
are  stiU  to  be  lit  which  will  owe  their 
quality  of  brightness  to  the  torch  they 
have  never  known.  So  surely  has  it 
been  and  will  it  be  with  the  influence 
of  Phillips  Brooks. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Soon  after  the  death  of  Phillips 
Brooks,  the  Eev.  Arthur  Brooks,  of 
New  York,  began  the  preparation  of 
the  exhaustive  Life  and  Letters  of  his 
distinguished  brother.  In  1895  the  Rev. 
Arthur  Brooks  died,  leaving  the  work 
unfinished.  Its  beginnings  and  the  ma- 
terial for  its  completion  were  then  put 
into  the  hands  of  the  Rev.  Prof.  A.  Y.  G. 
Allen,  who  at  this  writing  has  gone  far 
toward  finishing  the  two  large  volumes, 
which  are  to  be  published  by  Messrs. 
E.  P.  Button  &  Co.  of  New  York,  the 
publishers  of  all  the  writings  of  Phillips 
Brooks.  Until  it  appears,  the  reader 
wiU  search  in  vain  for  a  complete  ac- 
count of  the  preacher's  life. 

It  may  be  expected  that  many  of  his 
sermons,  when  they  can  be  read  in  inti- 
mate connection  with  his  letters  and 
other  memorials,  will  seem  to  bear  a 
definite    relation   to   the  life  he    lived. 


BIBUOGRAPHY  117 

There  are,  indeed,  several  of  his  pub- 
lished volumes  which  have  a  biographi- 
cal value  of  varying  obviousness.  These 
are  mentioned  below. 

In  chronological  relation  with  them 
are  included  references  to  the  few  maga- 
zine articles  in  which  the  reader  will 
find  the  most  suggestive  comment  and 
general  information.  As  the  present  list 
is  meant  to  include  only  the  writings  of 
easiest  accessibility,  it  does  not  touch 
upon  the  many  sermons  and  pamphlets 
relating  to  Phillips  Brooks  which  have 
appeared  since  his  death. 

I.  LEomBES  ON  Preaching.  Delivered 
before  the  Divinity  School  of  Yale  Col- 
lege in  1877.  (Xew  York,  1877  :  E.  P. 
Dutton  &  Co.)  Here  the  preacher's 
advice  to  beginners  in  his  profession  re- 
veals and  suggests  many  things  concern- 
ing his  own  practice  of  it. 

II.  New  England  Magdzine,  January, 
1892.  ' '  Phniips  Brooks. "  By  the  Rev. 
Julius  H.  Ward. 


118  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

III.  Harvard  Monthly,  February,  1893. 
(Phillips  Brooks  memorial  number,  con- 
taining papers  by  President  Eliot,  Dr. 
Lyman  Abbott,  E.  E.  Hale,  and  others. ) 

IV.  Andover  BevieWj  March-April,  1893. 
^'Phillips  Brooks. '^  By  Professor  (now 
Bishop)  William  Lawrence :  besides  an 
admirable  unsigned  editorial  article. 

V.  Atlantic  Monthly,  April,  1893.  ^^  Phil- 
lips Brooks.^'  By  the  Be  v.  Alexander 
V.  G.  Allen. 

YI.  New  England  Magazine,  May,  1893. 
'^Phillips  Brooks  and  Harvard  Univer- 
sity.^^ By  the  Rev.  Alexander  Mac- 
kenzie. 

VII.  Phillips  Beooks.  By  Arthur 
Brooks  (Black  and  White  Series). 
(New  York,  1893:  Harper  Brothers.) 
This  is  a  reprint  of  the  article  which  the 
brother  of  Phillips  Brooks  contributed 
to  Harper'' s  Magazine  for  May,  1893.  In 
another  form  he  had  already  delivered 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  119 

it  as  a  sermon  at  the  Churcli  of  the  In- 
carnation, New  York. 

VIII.  Essays  and  Addresses,  Relig- 
louSj  Literary,  and  Social.  Edited 
by  the  Rev.  John  Cotton  Brooks.  (New 
York,  1894:  E.  P.  Dutton  &  Co.) 
There  are  no  sermons  in  this  volume, 
but  the  preacher,  without  obtruding  his 
mission,  is  almost  constantly  present. 

IX.  Letters  of  Travel.  Edited  by 
M.  F.  B.  (New  York,  1894  :  E.  P.  Dut- 
ton &  Co.)  This  volume  contains  the 
informal  letters  written  to  members  of 
his  family  while  Phillips  Brooks  was 
spending  his  longer  and  shorter  vacations 
in  travel.  They  are  from  all  parts  of 
the  world,  and  unconsciously  exhibit 
many  personal  characteristics  of  the 
writer. 

X.  Reminiscences.  By  Thomas  M. 
Clark,  D.D.,  LL.D.  (pp.  266-272). 
(New  York,  1895  :  Thomas  Whittaker). 


120  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The   bishop  of    Ehode   Island  was  for 

many    years    an     intimate    friend    of 

Phillips    Brooks,  and    here,  as  always, 

writes  as  a  shrewd  observer  of  life  and 

character. 


The  beacon   BIOGRAPHIES. 

M.  A.  DeWOLFE  HOWE,  Editor. 


The  aim  of  this  scries  is  to  furnish  brief,  readable,  and 
authentic  accounts  of  the  lives  of  those  Americans  whose 
personalities  have  impressed  themselves  most  deeply  on  the 
character  and  history  of  their  country.  On  account  of  the 
length  of  the  more  formal  lives,  often  running  into  large 
volumes,  the  average  busy  man  and  woman  have  not  the 
time  or  hardly  the  inclination  to  acquaint  themselves  with 
American  biography.  In  the  present  series  everything  that 
such  a  reader  would  ordinarily  care  to  know  is  given  by 
writers  of  special  competence,  who  possess  in  full  measure 
the  best  contemporary  point  of  view.  Each  volume  is 
equipped  with  a  frontispiece  portrait,  a  calendar  of  important 
dates,  and  a  brief  bibliography  for  further  reading.  Finally, 
the  volumes  are  printed  in  a  form  convenient  for  reading 
and  for  carrying  handily  in  the  pocket. 

The  following  volumes  are  the  first  issued  :  — 
PHILLIPS   BROOKS,  by  the  Editor. 
DAVID  G.  FARRAGUT,  bv  James  Barnes. 
ROBERT  E.  LEE,  by  W.  P.'  Trent. 
JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL,    by   Edward    Everett 

Hale,  Jr. 
DANIEL  WEBSTER,  by  Norman  Hapgood. 

The  following  are  among  those  in  preparation  :  — 
JOHN  JAMES  AUDUBON,  by  John  Burroughs. 
EDWIN   BOOTH,  by  Charles  Townsend  Copeland. 
AARON  BURR,  by  Henry  Childs  Merwin. 
JAMES  FENIMORE    COOPER,  by  W.    B.    Shubrick 

Clymer. 
BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN,  by  Lindsay  Swift. 


SMALL,  PvlAYNARD  &  COMPANY,  Publishers, 
6  Beacon  Street,  Boston. 


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